Ask HN: What really happened to Cruise self-driving cars?

4 points by eh_why_not 1 year ago | 4 comments

Now that plenty of time has passed, I'm wondering if someone here had an inside track and is willing to share their insights.

Rough summary of the available public information:

- They had an accident in 2023 injuring, by not stopping instantly, a passerby who was hit by another car.

- They were investigated and then California temporarily suspended their license to drive around.

- By the end of 2023 there was a massive layoff, including top executives leaving. There were claims that the operation was too human-dependent / required too much human interventions.

- In 2024 there were some news that they were starting up again (outside CA maybe).

- In Dec 2024, GM dropped their funding altogether and gave up on self-driving / robotaxi, refocusing on driver assistance instead. Some analysts claimed that was in part (in addition to finances) due to politics and them not wanting to face off with Tesla under the new administration.

It always seemed to me that something was missing from the overall picture:

- While second to Waymo, they still seemed already far ahead from others; maybe they were, say, 90% there.

- Others, like Tesla, had many accidents, including fatal ones. But for those the gauntlet was not thrown that quickly. It is expected that self-driving cars will have accidents as they continue to improve; why would one such incident, that wasn't even fatal, have such a dramatic response?

- Sure it's possible that Cruise was just a row in a spreadsheet to some finance higher-ups at GM, and it was dropped like that because it wasn't making them money yet. But to drop such a multi-year investment has to have been something else, a deeper problem:

- E.g. Did they realize/decide that the technical architecture was somehow flawed and there was an unbreakable barrier that prevents them from achieving that remaining 10%?

iwanttocomment 1 year ago |

I took a trip in a Cruise before they shut down. It was around twice the time it should have taken due to avoidance of legal left turns (leading to a genuinely strange route) and bizarre and jarring sudden braking and acceleration. There was a large plexiglas shield between the passenger and "driver" area, preventing air conditioning from reaching the passenger compartment, and it was hot - it was like riding in a taxi with broken AC. It was a strange and unsettling ride.

I've also ridden in a Waymo, and apart from the strangely small amount of clearance into the rear passenger compartment (I am tall), the ride was smooth and refined.

I'm willing to give Cruise some sort of pass on the San Francisco issue - a body hit by another vehicle had been suddenly thrown into the path of the Cruise at close range, a terrible and confusing situation for any human or automated driver - but based on my experience, they did not generally have things worked out in a commercial fashion and needed to hit pause until they did.

dexwiz 1 year ago |

| While second to Waymo, they still seemed already far ahead from others; maybe they were, say, 90% there.

That is a strong claim. As someone who watched them drive around their neighborhood, you could easily tell Cruise was the worse driver compared to Waymo. When the 2023 incident occured, I was not surprised at all. They had difficulties with even the most basic of intersections. Waymo on the other hand has a much more natural driving style. Waymo has its issues, but not like Cruise. It drove like it was 15 and still in Driver's Ed.

eh_why_not 1 year ago | |

In case it's still not clear with the "while second to Waymo" phrase: "others" refers to contenders other than Waymo.

Zigurd 1 year ago |

GM bought a pig in a poke. The 2023 accident prompted GM senior management to review the Cruise operation and they found too many deficiencies to be worth fixing.

It's easy to look like Waymo. Much harder to actually perform at that level.

Robotaxis are a high stakes bet. You have to be extremely confident in the tech before spending billions of dollars to expand your service area.