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The news comes after a troubled year of controversial incidents and staff layoffs at the autonomous vehicle company.
General Motors (GM), the company that owns 90pc of Cruise, has announced that it will no longer fund its robotaxi project.
In a statement yesterday (10 December) the company said it plans to realign its autonomous driving strategy and prioritise the development of advanced driver assistance systems “on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles”.
Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM said Cruise has been “an early innovator in autonomy”, and the restructure will help advance the company’s vision for the future of transportation.
GM added that the robotaxi project is shutting down because of an increasingly competitive robotaxi market and because the time and resources needed to scale the business would be too high.
According to TechCrunch, Cruise employees were “surprised” and “blindsided” by the decision and layoffs are expected as the business is set to restructure – a move the company said would lower spending by more than $1bn annually. This restructuring is expected to take place in the first half of 2025.
Cruise’s robotaxi project has been marred by controversy over the last year. The company was involved in a high-profile incident when one of its robotaxis dragged and pinned down a hit-and-run victim in San Francisco in October 2023.
Its expansion plans then ground to a halt and Cruise had its driverless taxi permit suspended in the US state of California.
The company also cut a significant amount of staff and said it would focus on enhancing its safety standards before scaling up its operations.
The company had also been under investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration since 2022 after the company’s vehicles were involved in multiple rear-end crashes. However, this investigation was closed after Cruise agreed to recall nearly 1,200 of its robotaxis.
The news comes as Waymo continues to expand its own robotaxi service. Having started trialling the vehicles on San Franscisco freeways in August of this year, the Alphabet-owned company has now expanded its service to all of Los Angeles.
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