End of the road for self-driving pioneers Cruise and CAVForth
As the overnight success of DeepSeek sends shockwaves through the tech market, we reflect on two pretty seismic events in self-driving – the demise of Cruise and the cancellation of CAVForth.
We start in America, where, following months of uncertainty, General Motors (GM) has pulled the plug on its Cruise robotaxi division.
It was an ignominious end for what was, for a short time, the biggest brand in all self-driving, tipped to become a household name around the world.
Leading the way in this emerging sector brought unique challenges and intense scrutiny. While the “Ain’t nobody in it” police stop video provided amusement in 2022, further blue light incidents led to more vociferous criticism. Worse was to come.
Self-driving suspended
In October 2023, a Cruise car struck a pedestrian following a hit-and-run by a human-driven vehicle. The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended their autonomous testing permit. Co-founders Kyle Vogt and Daniel Kan departed.
Now, with GM reckoned to be $10 billion down, the axe has finally fallen. Cruise engineers and data are being moved across to GM’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) projects.
“Given the considerable time and expense required to scale a robotaxi business, and an increasingly competitive market, combining forces would be more efficient,” said GM CEO Mary Barra.
In 2022, Ford issued a similar explanation for dropping Argo AI. Back then GM were predicting that Cruise could turn over $50 billion a year by 2030. That dream lies in tatters, but can others take advantage of the clearer playing field?
Our 2024 Self-Driving Industry Legend, Prof. Philip Koopman, warns that “any company trying to scale up robotaxis is in for many years of city-by-city expansion.”
The obvious beneficiary of Cruise’s exit is Waymo. With services already up and running in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Austin, the company formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project seems to relish the city-by-city challenge.
Make no mistake. Waymo is way out in front in the US now, pursued by Amazon-owned Zoox and our very own Wayve, backed by Microsoft and Nvidia.
UK bus stop
A week after Cruise got binned came another disappointing development, this time much closer to home: The CAVForth autonomous bus service, our 2023 Vehicle of the Year winner, had been cancelled.
“We are proud to have achieved a world-first with this service, demonstrating the potential for self-driving technology on a real-world registered timetable in East Scotland,” said the operator, Stagecoach.
“While this was a trial of cutting-edge technology and a new route linking Ferrytoll with Edinburgh Park, passenger numbers have been too low to continue operating the service.
“It has provided a wealth of learnings that will inform the continued development of autonomous technology in the UK.”
Maybe full-sized single-decker buses aren’t the most suitable vehicles at this stage. Still, considering the abundance of near-empty buses on our roads, too few passengers seems an inadequate reason to ditch one of the UK’s flagship self-driving projects.
The announcement was met with disappointment and surprise. Writing in Forbes, Nicole Kobie asserted that the planned route extension to Dunfermline “might have given AB1 a fighting chance”.
At Truck & Bus Builder, Bradley Osborne, who had just published an interview with Jim Hutchinson of Fusion, along with a brilliant explainer on the AV Act, described it as “a shame”.
A shame indeed. The loss of two leading self-driving lights does little to reassure the public. However, with Tesla also eyeing robotaxi success, we’re reminded of Elon Musk’s erudite contribution to the 2022 FT Future of the Car Summit.
“There’s an incredibly big graveyard of car startups,” he noted. “They’ve almost all gone bankrupt. You’ve only heard of a tiny number of them, the DeLoreans of the world, but there are hundreds of others.”
Quite so. Perhaps such volatility in the early years of self-driving is only to be expected.
Let’s end on a positive note… you should hopefully have noticed that, thanks to some tech upgrades, Cars of the Future is displaying faster and sharper.
We’ve got big-name interviews coming up, the inside track on some very exciting new UK projects, and, of course, the Self-Driving Industry Awards 2025 to look forward to.
Thanks for your continued support as we enter our seventh year!
