After losing its California operating license last year over safety concerns, the autonomous vehicle company Cruise will soon partner with Uber to offer driverless transportation through the popular ride-hail app.
Cruise and Uber announced a multiyear partnership that will begin in 2025 and allow Uber customers to select a driverless Cruise vehicle for qualified trips. The partnership will begin in a single, unspecified city and will rely on Chevy Bolt-based autonomous vehicles.
Cruise grounded its entire fleet in October after California regulators revoked the company’s license to provide driverless rides, alleging that the company mishandled a safety incident in which a pedestrian was struck and dragged by a Cruise vehicle in San Francisco.
The pedestrian, who was in the street after being struck by a car with a driver, was pinned under a Cruise vehicle and sent to the hospital with injuries. In 2018, a self-driving car from Uber hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, causing the company to halt its driverless program in several cities.
Driverless Cruise vehicles remain banned in California, but autonomous cars operated by the Google spinoff Waymo are serving customers in San Francisco. Waymo is expanding into cities around the Bay Area and Southern California, the Associated Press reported, and announced that its robotaxis are completing more than 100,000 paid rides per week. Both Cruise and Uber are based in San Francisco.
Cruise, founded in 2013 and owned by General Motors, is providing trips with a driver behind the wheel in Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. The Uber partnership probably will be launched in one of those cities, the company said, and will rely on autonomous vehicles with no driver.
“Cruise is on a mission to leverage driverless technology to create safer streets and redefine urban life,” Cruise Chief Executive Marc Whitten said in a statement announcing the partnership. “We are excited to partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable, autonomous driving to even more people.”
Whitten began leading the company after founder and CEO Kyle Vogt stepped down after the California license suspension. The partnership with Uber is the company’s latest move under Whitten to regain public trust and establish a reliable revenue stream.
GM has not made any money off Cruise, instead seeing $5.8 billion in losses on the robotaxi service from 2021 to 2023, according to the AP. The automaker had an operating loss of $900 million on Cruise in the first half of this year.
Despite financial woes and safety missteps, Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said his company is excited about the partnership.
“We believe Uber can play an important role in helping to safely and reliably introduce autonomous technology to consumers and cities around the world,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement.
Follow www.latimes.com , phenofornia Team Editor