General Motors is officially ending its support for Crusie's beleaguered fleet of self-driving "robotaxis." In a surprise announcement this week, the US carmaker said it will "realign its autonomous driving strategy" to end robotaxis and instead focus on eventually creating an autonomous personal vehicle. Cruise, which previously operated as a subsidiary, will now be fully absorbed by GM. That's all a major departure for the driverless car company which had its sights set on offering paid robotaxis rides in multiple cities next year. Cruise previously proclaimed it planned to have close to a million of its autonomous vehicles flooding US streets by the end of the decade.

GM is giving up on its Cruise robotaxi subsidiary. The company announced today that it will fold Cruise into its own in-house technical team. Under the new strategy, this single unit will focus for now on developing advanced driver assistance programs, and in the future on fully autonomous personal vehicles. GM acquired Cruise in 2016. However, the robotaxi brand faced intense scrutiny last year after a pedestrian in San Francisco was struck and dragged by one of its driverless cars.

Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company owned by General Motors, has issued a recall for 950 of its robotaxis following a collision with a pedestrian in San Francisco last month, as originally reported by NBC. This move comes after California revoked the company's driverless permits, requiring a human on-board at all times. The collision that started all of this occurred on October 2 when a pedestrian was thrown into the path of a Cruise robotaxi after being hit by a human driver. The robotaxi tried to brake aggressively and pull over to the side of the road, but ended up dragging the pedestrian 20 feet before finally stopping. This triggered a federal probe and several independent investigations into the company, which dredged up some unsavory data.

The robotaxi company Cruise has been revving up for rapid growth. In August, California regulators granted carte blanche to the outfit in San Francisco, where its CEO has envisioned deploying 10 times more robotaxis than the several hundred it operated this summer. Meanwhile, Cruise, which is majority-owned by General Motors, announced expansions into a dozen other U.S. cities including Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Raleigh, and Washington. California just forced Cruise to hit the brakes. On Tuesday, the state's Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permits to deploy driverless vehicles statewide.

It was a week of robotaxi mayhem in San Francisco for the Cruise driverless car company -- by turns bizarre, comic and alarming. As a result, the California Department of Motor Vehicles said Friday it's investigating "recent concerning incidents" involving Cruise vehicles while tapping the brakes on the company's ambitious expansion plans. The DMV didn't say which incidents it's probing, but over a seven-day period the events included: Stuck in the wet muck, it was removed later by workers dispatched by Cruise. The truck struck the car, occupied by one passenger, who was transported to a hospital. Cruise said the passenger sustained "what we believe are non-severe injuries."

One day after California green-lighted a massive expansion of driverless robotaxis in San Francisco, the implications became clear. At about 11 p.m. Friday, as many as 10 Cruise driverless taxis blocked two narrow streets in the center of the city's lively North Beach bar and restaurant district. All traffic came to a standstill up Vallejo Street and around two corners on Grant. Human-driven cars sat stuck behind and in between the robotaxis, which might as well have been boulders: no one knew how to move them. The cars sat motionless with parking lights flashing for 15 minutes, then woke up and moved on, witnesses said.

A small fleet of Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco suddenly stopped operating on Tuesday night, effectively stopping traffic on a street in the city's Fillmore district for a couple of hours until employees were able to arrive. TechCrunch first noticed a Reddit post that featured a photo of the stalled driverless cabs at the corner of Gough and Fulton streets. Cruise -- which is General Motor's AV subsidiary -- only launched its commercial robotaxi service in the city last week. The rides feature no human safety driver, are geo-restricted to certain streets and can only operate in the late evening hours. Cruise apologized for the incident in a statement, but gave little explanation for what caused the mishap.