Cruise sidelines entire U.S. robotaxi fleet to focus on rebuilding 'public trust'

A reporter gets out of a Cruise driverless taxi after a test ride in San Francisco, Feb. 15, 2023.
A reporter gets out of a Cruise driverless taxi after a test ride in San Francisco this year. (Terry Chea / Associated Press)

In the wake of California withdrawing Cruise's permit to operate self-driving cars in the state, the company announced that it's suspending all U.S. robotaxi operations.

The move comes after the California Department of Motor Vehicles alleged that Cruise withheld from regulators video footage of a Cruise robotaxi dragging a person down a city street.

The future for the company is uncertain. Its parent company, General Motors, has lost $1.9 billion on Cruise so far this year, including a $732-million loss in the third quarter, according to its latest earnings report. Competitor Ford shut down its Argo robotaxi unit in 2022, concluding that the possibility of far-off profits weren't worth the enormous cash drain.

The California DMV gave two reasons for suspending Cruise's license this week: concerns about safety and claims that the company withheld from regulators video footage that showed a Cruise robotaxi drag an already injured woman 20 feet across street pavement before emergency workers could reach her.

Read more: California DMV pulls permits for Cruise's driverless cars over safety concerns

“The most important thing for us right now is to take steps to rebuild public trust,” Cruise said in a statement online Thursday night. "Part of this involves taking a hard look inwards and at how we do work at Cruise.”

Cruise vehicles with humans behind the wheel will continue to operate. Until this week, the company had been operating driverless services in San Francisco, Phoenix, Miami, Houston and Austin, Texas.

Cruise needs to be "extra vigilant when it comes to risk, relentlessly focused on safety" as it rebuilds public trust, a spokeswoman told The Times.

The incident marks a dark chapter in the emerging history of the automated vehicle industry. Whether Cruise's actions will harm the industry's reputation, or only its own, remains to be seen.

Robotaxi companies claim that autonomous vehicles are already safer than cars driven by humans. Officials in San Francisco say they're having trouble getting these companies to provide adequate data to prove that. But Cruise is dealing with more than safety in this case — it's dealing with allegations that it misled regulators and the media in ways that might erode public trust.