The Rise and Fall of Cruise

In an article in Fast Company, Jessica Bursztynsky outlines the brief history of Cruise, the autonomous car maker that seemed poised to be at the forefront of the self-driving revolution. “But building successful AVs proved to be pricier and more time consuming than initially expected, so many of Cruise’s peers ended their self-driving goals in the coming years. Cruise, and Google’s Waymo, were among the last and best players standing.”

After allowing the company to begin offering autonomous taxi rides in San Francisco earlier this year over protests from local officials, California regulators pulled Cruise’s operating license after multiple crashes and incidents involving its vehicles, including a San Francisco collision in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a woman before stopping. Then, facing more scrutiny, the company abruptly ended its operations across the country. 

Now, Cruise has laid off almost a quarter of its workforce and “could also face $1.5 million in fines and additional sanctions” from the California Transportation Commission for “misleading the commission through omission regarding the extent and seriousness of the accident” and making misleading public comments.