Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving taxi service, announced Tuesday that it will begin testing again around Houston. Cruise announced that they will start with human taxi drivers behind the wheel of their cars before moving to “supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver behind the wheel in the coming weeks.”
The announcement from Cruise came around the same time General Motors Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson At Deutsche Bank’s Global Automotive Industry Conference in New York, the automaker announced that it will inject. another $850 million to the robotaxi company to cover operating costs.
Cruise was nothing but a huge money pit for GM. Last year, the company pulled the plug on its self-driving taxis when one of its cars in a San Francisco park hit a pedestrian who was thrown into the path of a self-driving taxi by another car and dragged about 20 feet after being pinned under its wheel. California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended the company’s permits in less than a month. Cruise was fired about a quarter of the workforce and fired nine executives including company co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Kyle Vogy after an investigation into the crash.
Since then, Cruise has slowly but surely begun to show signs of new life. In April, the company announced it would do so start redeploying their services in Phoenix. As in Houston, Cruise cars will still be watched and driven by humans. The autonomous taxi company also plans to expand its services to other cities by reaching out to “officials and community leaders.” the company’s blogbut gave no timeline on when the extension might happen.
Update June 11, 5:45 PM ET: This article has been updated since publication to clarify that Cruise’s return to Houston was limited to testing rather than receiving fares.
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