Cruise is taking all its vehicles off public roads amid expanded safety probe, staff changes

Published

2 years ago

November 15, 2023

admin

Kyle Vogt, chief executive office and chief technology officer of Cruise Automation Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.

Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cruise, General Motors‘ embattled driverless car unit, said Tuesday it will pause all public road operations — both supervised and manual — in an expansion of last month’s pause of driverless operations.

“This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review,” Cruise wrote in a blog post. “We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology.”

The self-driving car unit has faced a barrage of safety concerns and incidents since it received approval in August for round-the-clock robotaxi service in San Francisco. Last week, Cruise announced it would recall 950 robotaxis after a pedestrian collision. In October, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles, effective immediately.

“When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the California DMV said in a statement at the time.

Federal auto safety regulators are also investigating Cruise following multiple reports about pedestrian injuries.

The decision to suspend all trips on public roads comes after a board meeting Monday at Cruise’s headquarters in San Francisco. The company also announced a reorganization and more oversight from GM: Craig Glidden, GM’s EVP of legal and policy, will become Cruise’s chief administrative officer, with Cruise’s legal and policy, communications and finance teams as direct reports. Glidden will also work closely with CEO Kyle Vogt and senior leadership to “oversee the workstreams around Transparency and Community Engagement,” according to Cruise.

The company also announced that it will hire an independent “safety expert” in coming weeks to assess Cruise’s safety operations and culture, building upon its decision to hire a chief safety officer, announced last week. In addition, Exponent — the engineering consulting firm Cruise hired to analyze an Oct. 2 crash that led to a pedestrian’s critical injuries — will now be expanding its probe into a full review of Cruise’s tech and safety systems, according to the blog post.

Cruise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suspension is rippling through the company. Last Thursday, Cruise announced a round of contractor layoffs.

“Cruise has made the difficult decision to reduce a portion of the contingent workforce that supported driverless ridehail operations,” a company spokesperson told CNBC Thursday in a statement. “These contingent workers were responsible for work such as cleaning, charging and maintaining the fleet, and we’re grateful for their contributions.”

One Cruise contractor, who worked for the company through Unifi and requested anonymity, told CNBC that on paper, that may have been the job description, but in actuality, they were also often in charge of reprogramming cars, physically updating cars after a software update, offloading data and more. The contractor also said that some of their coworkers found out via a sign posted about shifts being canceled, along with an email.

Cruise told CNBC on Thursday that the layoffs reflected its temporary suspension of driverless activities, and that the company planned to “continue supervised operations without passengers.” However, as of now it has suspended those operations as well.

In GM’s third-quarter earnings update, the company said it had lost roughly $1.9 billion on Cruise through September of this year.

Technology

How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

Published

8 hours ago

November 30, 2025

admin

How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

After the search for survivors and recovery of victims in tragic aviation accidents — like that of a UPS cargo plane shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky last month — comes the search for flight data and a cockpit voice recorder often called the “black box.”

Every commercial plane has them. Aerospace giants GE Aerospace and Honeywell are among a few companies that design them to be nearly indestructible so they can help investigators understand the cause of a crash.

“They’re very crucial because it’s one of the few sources of information that tells us what happened leading up to the accident,” said Chris Babcock, branch chief of the vehicle recorder division at the National Transportation Safety Board. “We can get a lot of information from parts and from the airplane.”

Commercial aircraft have become very complex. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner records thousands of different pieces of information. In the case of the Air India crash in June, data revealed both engine fuel switches were put into a cutoff position within one second of each other. A voice recording from inside the cockpit captured the pilots discussing the cutoffs.

“All of those parameters today can have a very huge impact on the investigation,” said former NTSB member John Goglia. “It’s our goal to to provide information back to our investigators who are on scene as quick as we can to help move the investigation forward.”

This crucial data can also help prevent future accidents. A crash can cost airlines or plane manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars and leave victims’ families with a lifetime of grief.

But in some circumstances black boxes were destroyed or never found. Experts say further developments such as cockpit video recorders and real-time data streaming are needed.

“The technology is there. Crash worthy cockpit video recorders are already being installed in a lot of helicopters and other types of airplanes, but they’re not required,” said Jeff Guzzetti, aviation analyst and former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB. “There’s privacy and cost issues involving cockpit video recorders but the NTSB has been recommending that the FAA require them for years now.”

Watch the video to learn more.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.

Technology

Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

admin

Stocks end November with mixed results despite a strong Thanksgiving week rally

Technology

Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

admin

Palantir has worst month in two years as AI stocks sell off

CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S., July 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

It’s been a tough November for Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics provider dropped 16% for their worst month since August 2023 as investors dumped AI stocks due to valuation fears. Meanwhile, famed investor Michael Burry doubled down on the artificial intelligence trade and bet against the company.

Palantir started November off on a high note.

The Denver-based company topped Wall Street’s third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. Palantir also posted its second-straight $1 billion revenue quarter, but high valuation concerns contributed to a post-print selloff.

In a note to clients, Jefferies analysts called Palantir’s valuation “extreme” and argued investors would find better risk-reward in AI names such as Microsoft and Snowflake. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets raised concerns about the company’s “increasingly concentrated growth profile,” while Deutsche Bank called the valuation “very difficult to wrap our heads around.”

Adding fuel to the post-earnings selloff was the revelation that Burry is betting against Palantir and AI chipmaker Nvidia. Burry, who is widely known for predicting the housing crisis that occurred in 2008 and the portrayal of him in the film “The Big Short,” later accused hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp vocally hit the front lines, appearing twice in one week on CNBC, where he accused Burry of “market manipulation” and called the investor’s actions “egregious.”

“The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bats— crazy,” Karp told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Despite the vicious selloff, Palantir has notched some deal wins this month. That included a multiyear contract with consulting firm PwC to speed up AI adoption in the U.K. and a deal with aircraft engine maintenance company FTAI.

But those announcements did little to shake off valuation worries that have haunted all AI-tied companies in November.

Across the board, investors have viciously ditched the high-priced group, citing fears of stretched valuations and a bubble.

In November, Nvidia pulled back more than 12%, while Microsoft and Amazon dropped about 5% each. Quantum computing names such as Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum have shed more than a third of their value.

Apple and Alphabet were the only Magnificent 7 stocks to end the month with gains.

Sill, questions linger over Palantir’s valuation, and those worries aren’t a new concern.

Even after its steep price drop, the company’s stock trades at 233 times forward earnings. By comparison, Nvidia and Alphabet traded at about 38 times and 30 times, respectively, at Friday’s close.

Karp, who has long defended the company, didn’t miss an opportunity to clap back at his critics, arguing in a letter to shareholders that the company is making it feasible for everyday investors to attain rates of return once “limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto.”

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said during an earnings call. “Enjoy, get some popcorn. They’re crying. We are every day making this company better, and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir declined to comment for this story.

WATCH: Palantir CEO Alex Karp: We’ve printed venture results for the average American