Source: Zhitong Finance APP
In order to achieve robot taxi revenue of $1 billion by 2025 and $50 billion by 2030$General Motors (GM.US)$Cruise LLC is working to expand its robotic driving payment service throughout the San Francisco area and operate 24 hours a day. The California Public Utilities Commission is weighing the company's request. Currently, Cruise operates from 10:00 to 05:30, operating in 1/3 of the region.
Cruise points out that in order to prove the safety of its service, its recently released data show that the robotic taxi supplier completed 2800 trips covering 27000 miles from September to November last year (its most recent reporting quarter) without major collisions or accidents. The company has completed nearly 1 million miles of fully robotic mileage in the city and says its self-driving car products are safe.
An authority in San Francisco said the approval may not be completed so quickly. It is reported that the San Francisco Transportation Department (The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) submitted a brief against Cruise's operation plan on January 25, saying it had found 92 accidents caused by Cruise self-driving cars blocking traffic, causing delays in traffic services, blocking bus lanes or (in two cases) interfering with the passage of fire engines in the last seven months of 2022. The agency's view is that Cruise AV will suddenly stop during the trip and interfere with the flow of buses and private cars.
For Cruise, its main interest issue is that it employs more than 3000 highly skilled workers in one region, which has an impact on its expansion plans and further extends General Motors Co's return on investment cycle. General Motors Co invests about $2 billion a year in the start-up. Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors Co, has high hopes for Cruise. But since it took over the top job nine years ago, the company has drastically scaled back, withdrawing from Europe and shutting down operations in countries such as India, Australia and South Africa.
Sources show that Bola has diverted General Motors Co's funds to invest in self-driving car development and electric vehicles. The return on both investments will take longer than expected, and it may take years for Cruise to make a profit, while sales of General Motors Co's latest product, the Ultium electric car, were negligible last year.
To be sure, the San Francisco Transportation Bureau has long been stepping up regulation of robot-driven taxis and taxi-hailing services provided by Uber and Lyft. The regulator has made some points, saying that although the accident problems caused by Cruise so far are not serious, when the company's robot-driven taxi is unable to navigate, the car will pull over, blocking the traffic of other drivers and transport vehicles.
More than a decade ago, when engineers and entrepreneurs began to study autopilot, they predicted that robotic driving would improve road safety and reduce congestion. Now, they need to solve the problem of safely driving to complete travel orders without causing traffic jams.