Since General Motors acquired the San Francisco self-driving-tech developer Cruise in 2016, the Detroit automaker has poured more than 8 billion into creating a robotaxi service. Now GM is turning off the spigot. On a call with investors today, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company would no longer invest in Cruise and its robotaxi services. Instead, GM says it will combine Cruise's efforts on autonomy with its own teams focused on driver-assistance features. Eventually, the combined team will build "personal" autonomous vehicles, the chief executive said.

General Moters' self-driving-car unit, Cruise, is shaking up its leadership after the company lost permits needed to operate in California and paused its operations. On Sunday, Cruise Chief Executive Kyle Vogt announced he was resigning. Vogt, who co-founded Cruise in 2013, announced his departure on the social media site X, formerly Twitter. He didn't say why he was leaving but said he planned to spend more time with family and "explore some new ideas." "Cruise is still just getting started, and I believe it has a great future ahead," Vogt said on X.

The founder of General Motors-owned Cruise has stepped down less than a month after the driverless car company paused operations after an accident and the loss of permission to operate in California. Kyle Vogt did not give a reason for his departure from the company that he started in 2013 before it was bought by the US automotive manufacturer General Motors in 2016. San Francisco-based Cruise is seen as one of the most advanced autonomous driving companies in the world, and it had started charging passengers for journeys in some US cities. However, it paused all of its driverless cars on 26 October after California regulators revoked its licence to transport passengers without a driver after an accident on 2 October. The company recalled nearly 1,000 vehicles to update their software after the incident.

Kyle Vogt, CEO of self-driving car developer Cruise and who founded the company before its acquisition by General Motors in 2016, resigned this evening. His announcement comes amidst upheaval at the company which last month had its permit to operate its groundbreaking robotaxi service in San Francisco suspended by state regulators. "The status quo on our roads sucks, but together we've proven there is something far better around the corner," Vogt wrote in a message to Cruise workers posted on X. He did not refer to the company's recent troubles. Cruise's crisis began on the night of October 2 in San Francisco when a human driver struck a pedestrian and threw her into the path of one of the company's driverless robotaxis.

Kyle Vogt, the CEO of General Motors' robot-taxi unit Cruise, has resigned from the company a day after apologizing to staff as the company undergoes a safety review of its U.S. fleet. Vogt, 38, offered little in the way of explanation, stating simply "I have resigned from my position" in an email to staff on Sunday. Vogt founded Cruise in 2013. His decision follows weeks of turmoil at the unit, which had to pull all its vehicles from testing in the United States to conduct a safety review after an Oct. 2 accident that ended with one of Cruise's self-driving taxis dragging a pedestrian.

In August 2016, WIRED visited the San Francisco offices of a young startup recently snapped up by a surprising buyer. General Motors acquired three-year-old Cruise for a reported $1 billion in hopes the straitlaced Detroit automaker could coopt the self-driving technology tipped to disrupt the auto industry. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt--a scrappy Twitch cofounder who competed as a teen in BattleBots--said he intended to stick around, but to keep running the driverless-car tech developer like a startup. He'd be out of a job, he predicted, if he couldn't hack the self-driving thing in 10 to 15 years. GM's financial reports show it losing $8.2 billion on Cruise since the start of 2017, and it has sunk at least $1.9 billion into the company this year.

Cruise, General Motors' driverless car subsidiary, will soon lay off employees. According to Forbes, the company's CEO Kyle Vogt told staff of the decision in an all-hands meeting earlier this week. Cruise hasn't yet decided who or how many people will lose their jobs, Vogt said, but promised to provide more details in the next three weeks. The company will also conduct internal "listening sessions", and explore building websites detailing collisions Cruise cars are involved in, Forbes said. The news comes on the heels of multiple crises facing the company since October after a Cruise robotaxi dragged a San Francisco pedestrian thrown into its path more than 20 feet before braking to a halt.

GM's autonomous vehicle Cruise division is already going through a rough patch, with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) recently suspending its driverless permits over safety issues. Now, several new reports have highlighted other issues with the company, including problems with its autonomous vehicles (AVs) recognizing children and the frequency with which human operators must remotely take control. The company also just announced that it's temporarily suspending production of its fully autonomous Origin transport. The most concerning issue is that Cruise reportedly kept its vehicles on the streets even though it knew they had problems recognizing children, The Intercept reported. According to internal, previously unreported safety assessment materials, Cruises autonomous vehicles may have been unable to effectively detect children in order to take extra precautions.

Cruise recently began giving daytime robotaxi rides in San Francisco. Cruise is now offering daytime robotaxi rides to its employees. The self-driving unit of GM hopes to open up the service to the public soon. Cruise has been testing its robotaxi service in San Francisco since June 2021, when it became the first company authorized to test robotaxis in the state. In June 2022, it was finally able to begin charging for robotaxi rides in the city.

An operator controls a Fetch driverless car from the office of Imperium Drive, during driverless car trials, in Milton Keynes, Britain, June 8, 2022. MILTON KEYNES, England (Reuters) -Autonomous vehicle (AV) startups have raised tens of billions of dollars based on promises to develop truly self-driving cars, but industry executives and experts say remote human supervisors may be needed permanently to help robot drivers in trouble. The central premise of autonomous vehicles – that computers and artificial intelligence will dramatically reduce accidents caused by human error – has driven much of the research and investment. But there is a catch: Making robot cars that can drive more safely than people is immensely tough because self-driving software systems simply lack humans' ability to predict and assess risk quickly, especially when encountering unexpected incidents or "edge cases." "Well, my question would be, 'Why?'" said Kyle Vogt, CEO of Cruise, a unit of General Motors (NYSE:GM), when asked if he could see a point where remote human overseers should be removed from operations.