Cruise robotaxis in crisis: layoffs, recall, and algorithm found to have blind spot for kids
The news has been epically bad for Cruise robotaxis these past few weeks. GM’s driverless car subsidiary has announced a round of layoffs this week, with the CEO Kyle Vogt reportedly telling employees this week in an all-hands meeting. Plus investigations have dredged up some incriminating news that the software’s algorithm had trouble detecting children.
This week, the company, which has 4,000 employees, started laying off contingent workers who support the driverless fleet, with more layoffs to follow, according to TechCrunch. Employees aren’t likely too surprised, considering the round of disasters the company has been facing since the incident when a Cruise robotaxi dragged a San Francisco pedestrian more than 20 feet before braking – the pedestrian was hit prior by another human-driving car and flung into the path of a Cruise vehicle.
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles pulled Cruise’s operating permit, citing that the vehicles “are not safe for the public’s operation” and “misrepresentation” of the car’s technology. A few weeks later, Cruise paused all of it operations in other cities, including Austin, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and Phoenix.
This all triggered a federal probe and independent investigations into the company, which unfortunately dug up internal documents that detailed the vehicle’s algorithm had trouble identifying children. Apparently company staff were aware, and still the robotaxis were still on the streets. According to internal safety documents reviewed by The Intercept, “Cruise AVs may not exercise additional care around children,” who are treated as a special category of pedestrian based on their unpredictable behaviors, and that the robotaxis may “need the ability to distinguish children from adults so we can display additional caution around.”
Erik Moser, Cruise’s director of communications, responded: “Our driverless operations have always performed higher than a human benchmark, and we constantly evaluate and mitigate new risks to continuously improve… We have the lowest risk tolerance for contact with children and treat them with the highest safety priority. No vehicle — human operated or autonomous — will have zero risk of collision.” Moser added that “the risk of the potential collision with a child could occur once every 300 million miles at fleet driving, which we have since improved upon. There have been no on-road collisions with children.”
From The Intercept:
The materials note results from simulated tests in which a Cruise vehicle is in the vicinity of a small child. “Based on the simulation results, we can’t rule out that a fully autonomous vehicle might have struck the child,” reads one assessment. In another test drive, a Cruise vehicle successfully detected a toddler-sized dummy but still struck it with its side mirror at 28 miles per hour.
General Motors voluntarily recalled Cruise’s entire fleet of 950 robotaxis, and yesterday Cruise published a blog post in response to the recent events. Interestingly, the post said that the company is looking to hire a chief safety officer, and is bringing on law firm Quinn Emmanuel, which has worked with Elon Musk, to review its response to the October pedestrian incident in San Francisco.
Since purchasing Cruise in 2016 for $1 billion, General Motors has been hemorrhaging money. From January to September, GM lost $1.9 billion on Cruise expenses between January and September this year, in addition to a $732 million loss in the third quarter.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.
GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.
As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:
- seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
- two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
- two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona
Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.
“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”
GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.
Electrek’s Take
Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”
All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.
SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.
Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.
As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”
The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.
“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”
The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.
The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.
“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”
The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”
In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”
Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway