Cruise plans to build a winter version of the Origin, the company’s self-driving car prototype that’s specially designed without a steering wheel or pedals.
“Two years from now, we will have a new version of our cars that is adapted to cold weather,” Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023.
Cruise operates a commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco and Austin, as well as a toll-free service in Phoenix. The GM-owned company is also collecting data, mapping and testing in about a dozen other cities, mostly using its fleet of Chevy Bolt EVs. Cruise is still waiting for federal approval to begin mass production of Origins.
Like most autonomous vehicle companies, Cruise has limited its testing and operations to the Sun Belt region of the United States — where sunny weather provides the ideal environment for autonomous vehicles to learn about their environment. San Francisco, Cruise’s hometown, has fog and sometimes smog in the air, but self-driving vehicles rarely have to contend with snow or ice there.
As Cruise’s range expands over the next two years, Vogt said, it will begin entering cities north of the Sun Belt. But first you’ll need to bring more vehicles online that can handle tough weather. This brings up a variety of “fun engineering details,” Vogt said.
“A simple example of this is the sensor pods, where all the cameras, radars and lidar are located, and they have built-in heating elements, so they can melt ice and snow that might build up on them,” Vogt said. “You can’t really work in a city with harsh, humid weather unless you do this.”
Cruise has been actively working on the problem of winterizing its cars for years now in order to bring the technology to market around 2025, according to Vogt. The development cycle in the automotive world is long and can take at least four years to go from the time the technology is ready to the time it is mass produced in a vehicle. Everything from the reliability of every part of the vehicle to supply chain issues to the efficiency of the factory line are all moving parts that need to be balanced when bringing a new vehicle to market.
While on stage at Disrupt, Vogt said he expects Cruise to start “scouting” Midwestern cities by next year, collecting data and learning about these new environments. But the company will not start offering trial service in those cities in 2024.
“If we did that, we would have a service that we would have to turn on when it’s sunny and turn off if it starts snowing, and while that’s possible and something we’ll explore, it’s not ideal from a customer standpoint.” Vogt said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article said Cruise’s service in Austin was free, but it was a commercial service.