Seeing no road to profit, GM shutters Cruise

After spending more than $10 billion to try to develop an autonomous robotaxi, General Motors is now calling time on the endeavor. On Tuesday afternoon, the automaker announced that it is done investing in Cruise’s robotaxi development and will instead combine the startup’s technical team with its internal efforts at GM.

After several years, GM has accepted the inevitable: Given the costs, there’s no way to build a profitable robotaxi business. This year, GM will have spent around $2 billion on Cruise.

“GM is committed to delivering the best driving experiences to our customers in a disciplined and capital efficient manner,” said Mary Barra, chair and CEO of GM. “Cruise has been an early innovator in autonomy, and the deeper integration of our teams, paired with GM’s strong brands, scale, and manufacturing strength, will help advance our vision for the future of transportation.”

On a call with investors, Barra said that GM still “believe[s] in the importance of driver-assistance and autonomous driving technology in our vehicles.”

GM bought into Cruise in 2016, when self-driving fever was at its peak. It had lofty goals of deploying robotaxis in a number of major US cities, and as early as 2019, it was lobbying the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to be allowed to leave the steering wheel out of its test vehicles.

Cruise built its tech using a fleet of Chevrolet Bolts but had bigger plans for the Origin, a driverless pod purpose-designed for robotaxi work. But the Origin was laid to rest earlier this summer when GM killed the program in favor of Cruise continuing to use the Bolt.