Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said Thursday at an investor conference that the company is close to getting the green light to begin mass production of its purpose-built self-driving car without a steering wheel or pedals.
“We are testing him and this is what we heard from him [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration]”It’s just days away from the latest regulatory approval, which will allow us to start production and almost immediately start putting these vehicles on the road,” Vogt said at a Goldman Sachs event.
NHTSA told TechCrunch that no decision has been reached to accept or deny GM’s application, and no deadline has been set for such a decision. However, so are federal safety regulators is expected to be announced Set new rules in September. If passed, it would also benefit Amazon subsidiary Zoox, which has built and tested a similar type of vehicle for Cruise’s Origin.
Cruise first revealed Origin AV — designed for both autonomous ride-hailing and delivery services — in early 2020. The GM-backed company promised to put “tens of thousands” of Origins on the streets of major US cities over the next few years, but its capacity has been stymied. On the start of mass production due to lengthy regulatory processes.
Cruz, via GM, was waiting Exemption One of the federal government’s motor vehicle safety standards, which requires vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals. The NHTSA only grants 2,500 such exemptions each year, but there is legislation to increase that number to 25,000.
Cruz still Test its origins In the cities where it operates such as San Francisco and Austin.
Vogt’s announcement comes just weeks after one of those test vehicles went off the road and crashed into a small electrical building, according to Austin Department of Transportation records obtained by Vogt. Axios. The report said the Origin plane hit the building with enough force to break some of it. Since the car had no steering wheel, emergency personnel were unable to move it quickly, and had to wait for the tow truck.
The Origin test vehicle experienced a system malfunction during testing and stopped safely, but when live support restarted the vehicle, it moved out of park and rolled into the building at six miles per hour, Cruz said.
Cruise’s ability to gain regulatory approval will depend on how the company answers questions about the safety of its vehicles already on the road.
Today, Cruise operates fleets of Chevy Bolt AVs in San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix, with plans to expand into a few cities. The company has come under the microscope in its hometown of San Francisco, where it operates about 400 robotaxis, after a series of stalling incidents that caused traffic jams and blocked emergency responders. The California Department of Motor Vehicles asked Cruz to reduce the size of its fleet after one of its vehicles collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger. This happened days after Cruise and rival Waymo received final approval to expand fully autonomous commercial services throughout the city, 24/7.
Earlier this week, protesters gathered outside Cruise headquarters after the fire department accused the company of allowing a robotaxi to block the path of an ambulance carrying a passenger who later died. Cruz showed footage of the incident to TechCrunch, which supported his denial of the incident as described by the fire department, but the company took a hit to its reputation anyway.
Speaking at an investor event, Vogt expressed concern that too much opposition to robotaxis — simply because they are a groundbreaking technology that will make mistakes — will stall important technological advances that can make roads safer and save lives.
“I’m concerned that we will set society back a decade when it comes to road safety,” he said. “This is just something we can’t do.”
Building cheaper self-driving vehicles to improve unit economics
Although Origin is designed to be a “party on wheels” or “a Zen oasis between meetings or on your way to work,” Vogt noted, it will also provide an opportunity to build more vehicles at a cheaper cost.
The Cruise CEO and founder said the Origin cost less to build than GM’s Chevy Bolts because all the sensors, computing systems and software are streamlined to reduce the initial cost of the vehicle. Within a few years, Origins will rely on custom, in-house designed Cruise chips, which Vogt says takes a lot of cost and complexity out of the equation.
“Working closely with GM, we have done a lot of work to increase the life of this vehicle,” Vogt said. “The average car probably gets 150,000 miles, 200,000 miles, or something in that range. Origin is designed to last a million cars…so, if you put that long life and low initial cost together, that’s a significant cost reduction.” every mile to operate these vehicles, which is a key to profitability.
Vogt went on to say that once Origin enters production, it can scale very quickly. He declined to provide a schedule or capacity at the GM plant.
“We have a lot of precision in terms of the ultimate cost of this and the timing, which means that in 2025, the machines we build will be able to reach those unit economics,” Vogt said, reiterating Cruz’s goal of reaching a $1 per mile operating cost target. .
Cruise has stated a goal of reaching $1 billion in revenue by 2025, a goal that Vogt said the company is on track to achieve and one that may help Cruise finally break even. That means if Cruise can start mass producing cheaper Origin vehicles, expand into new markets, and operate more vehicles in more hours of the day.
This article has been updated with more information about Cruise’s plans to expand Origin and access better unit economics.