GM Cruise Robotaxi Service Takes Off In Austin

GM is one of the bigger players in self-driving technology thanks to its ownership of Cruise. Now, Cruise is launching a new robotaxi service in Austin, Texas which is the backyard of Tesla. Cruise had already been operating its self-driving service in California and since June it had also been taking paid fares. And achieved this before Google’s Waymo which is basically the pioneer of the technology. It has also beaten Tesla to the punch which has been talking about a robotaxi service for over 6 years. Elon Musk had famously said that Tesla would have 1 million robot taxis on the road by the end of the year and then he changed it to have 1 million users in the full self-driving beta.

The Cruise service is not open to the public in Austin. It is currently restricted to friends and family of Cruise employees, but they are taking actually paid rides. Cruise has also started its service in Phoenix, Arizona. Waymo has also launched in Phoenix. Cruise is the first self-driving player to actually deliver on a promise of having a robotaxi service working in three cities.

Cruise’s service has had issues. One of its cars got pulled over by the police and it bolted off last week the NHTSA opened an investigation into its vehicles caused an accident, by stopping abruptly and blocking roadways.

Cruise of course doesn’t sell cars. Its technology flows into GM’s vehicles. Waymo also has ambitions of partnering with established automotive players while also having its own robotaxi service. Tesla on the other hand is renowned for its electric cars which will also have self-driving technology.

Its technology is also different as Tesla doesn’t use sophisticated hardware like LiDARs, but has a more sensor and software-defined platform that improves thanks to machine learning algorithms evolving with an increase in data with the computational power of the Dojo Supercomputer.