Back in December, Ford’s cross-town rival, General Motors, announced that it was no longer working on a robotaxi via its autonomous vehicle unit, Cruise, and would instead focus its efforts on autonomous technology for personal vehicles rather than commercial ones, shifting the capital it was investing in its robotaxi efforts to help further develop its Super Cruise hands-free semi-autonomous driving feature. GM noted that it would work with Cruise amid this restructuring of sorts, though it was unclear what that might look like. Now, GM has opted to take full ownership of its A/V unit.
According to GM Authority, the Cruise Board of Directors has approved a merger offer from GM, which will result in the automaker assuming full control of that unit, of which it previously owned around 90 percent. Cruise will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of GM, with its assets and some of its employees refocusing on the automaker’s Super Cruise development efforts. “By combining the specialized technology and talent at Cruise with our team developing Super Cruise, we’ll have the ability to accelerate our work on both assisted driving and autonomous driving,” said Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering. “We look forward to teaming with Cruise to accelerate our work together.”
This particular move has seemingly been inevitable for a long time now, as Cruise has found itself mired in controversy and fines. Most recently, Cruise admitted to submitting a false report to influence a federal investigation conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) following the aforementioned pedestrian-involved incident in 2023, in which it reportedly “failed to disclose key details of the case.” As such, the Justice Department announced that Cruise will be required to pay a $500,000 criminal fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
Ford hasn’t yet announced new plans to develop a robotaxi of its own, but has long explored such a possibility – dating back to early 2017, in fact. The automaker was rumored to be working on a new robotaxi riding on the company’s under-development low-cost EV platform recently, but for now at least, that particular market is being dominated by Waymo.
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