Cruise Looks To Bounce Back In Phoenix

America’s favorite maligned robotaxi company is back! Cruise is on the road again. They are starting in Phoenix, Arizona, where human drivers will pilot Cruise vehicles. According to its blog, the company is looking to redeem itself in the public’s eye by improving its approach to safety.

Cruise Returns To Phoenix

Cruise announced on April 9th that their robotaxis will be hitting Phoenix’s streets with human safety drivers, and none of these vehicles will be using their autonomous driving systems for now. They plan to have the human drivers map out road information, first in Phoenix and later in other cities. New York is possible, though that will be a tall order given Cruise’s track record for safety. The ultimate goal here is to gather enough data about each city’s roads so they can resume driverless operations.

Before doing that, Cruise realizes they will have to rebuild trust. Their blog cites that they chose Phoenix due to their “strong history” in the location. Additionally, Cruise claims many of their employees live there while pointing to the city’s tech-friendly leaders. It’s a logical first step. Go to a friendly city to start again before expanding. For example, they’d be barking up the wrong tree if they tried doing this in San Francisco.

Cruise Hired New A New Chief Safety Officer 

In February, the company hired a new Chief Safety Officer, Steve Kenner. It wasn’t a surprising move considering that Kenner started his career as an engineer with Cruise’s parent company, GM.

Of Kenner’s hiring, Cruise’s President and Chief Technology Officer, Mo Elshenawy, said, “Steve Kenner brings the perfect blend of experience in AV and automotive safety excellence to help deliver on these important priorities. Safety governance is a critical gating factor as we return to our mission and get Cruise cars back on the road safely.”

In the blog post announcing his hiring, Kenner said he looked forward to helping Cruise regain the trust they lost with regulators and the public after numerous incidents last year. The worst of these incidents was in October 2023 when a Cruise robotaxi ran over and dragged a pedestrian through the street for 20 feet before stopping.

Cruise posted a letter to their blog addressing this incident, which we have some thoughts about.

Cruise’s Letter

Before announcing their return to the streets of Phoenix last week, the head honchos at Cruise penned a letter on their blog stating that their response to the situation that unraveled in October “fell short of expectations.” The “expectations” Cruise executives refer to are that people expected them to care about one of their machines running someone over instead of just worrying that this “severe incident” would tarnish their reputation. 

Their letter goes on to state that during their “pause” from operations, they took the opportunity to “rebuild” so “all stakeholders” would trust them again. Stakeholders? What about pedestrians? Cruise’s robotaxi didn’t drag one of their investors across asphalt for 20 feet. Cruise ran several top executives out of the company after the incident, but that’s not quite the same thing.

Outside of firing the executives in power when this incident happened, the company’s letter and recent blog post want to clarify that they are now a more transparent company. Their blog post, in particular, outlines how they plan to grow as a company.

Cruise Is Using AI To Improve Their Robotaxis

Like every significant company, Cruise expects AI technology to drive them into the future. In their case, AI will allow them to utilize adaptive fleet learning to improve their robotaxis.

According to their blog, this will allow their entire robotaxi fleet to learn “from every intersection, construction zone, and road sign it encounters, and applies that knowledge to other environments and scenarios – much the same as a human driver learns, but with far more data and the ability to impart that continuous learning across the entire fleet.”

Additionally, Cruise states that they accrued plenty of data for training their fleet even when they were not operational after the October incident. They have been testing and training their robotaxis in dynamic environments on closed courses. That data training continues in Phoenix. Even though humans will operate Cruise’s vehicles without autonomous features, the data and street information gathered on each run can still train the entire fleet.

Cruises’ next step, assuming all goes well in Phoenix, will be to expand to other cities in the United States.

Their Step By Step Plan For Going Driverless

According to Cruise’s blog, the first step of their new robotaxi training is gathering reliable location data to train their vehicles better to recognize key road features. These features include stop signs, lane dividers, speed limits, traffic lights, and right-turn-only lanes. It’s important to note that their blog forgot to mention pedestrians.

Once their robotaxis understands what is on the road, Cruise will measure their prediction and perception systems against new performance criteria, with safety drivers overseeing everything. Since this is a testing phase, none of Cruise’s robotaxis will give rides to public passengers.

Cruise’s next step will be to test their robotaxi’s autonomous driving functions on public roads with safety drivers behind the wheel. Additionally, Cruise will continue to train their vehicles through driving simulations on closed courses. Cruise has not yet announced timelines for how long they expect these steps to take.