Amid increasing scrutiny from public and regulators, Cruise’s new president Mo Elshenawy has acknowledged that the robotaxi firm has hit an “all time low”, while promising to restore trust after the company pulled all of its vehicles from US roads. “Our integrity, our competency are being questioned and this really hurts,” he said while addressing an all-staff meeting, Reuters reported. “We went from an all-time high to an all-time low and from being an industry leader to temporary pausing all of our operations,” he added.
A change in approach
Elshenawy was installed as the president last month after the company’s CEO Kyle Vogt and chief product officer Daniel Kan stepped down following regulatory scrutiny after an accident involving a Cruise robotaxi took place in October in San Francisco. He said that the company’s approach to developing self-driving cars has been “wrong”. “We now know that we need to be significantly better than human performance and significantly better across a much wider spectrum of use cases and edge cases,” he added.
Fines and sanctions
Cruise faces USD 1.5 million in fines and additional sanctions over its failure to disclose details regarding the October accident in which one of its autonomous vehicles dragged a pedestrian after she was struck by another vehicle, a California agency said. The California Public Utilities Commission has ordered the company to appear at a February 6 hearing for “misleading the Commission through omission regarding the extent and seriousness of the accident” and “making misleading public comments regarding its interactions with the commission.
Safety reviews
The autonomous vehicle unit of General Motors (GM) has hired a law firm to help it conduct a safety review after it pulled all of its vehicles off public US roads The external review of Cruise’s safety will last into the first quarter of 2024, GM CEO Mary Barra informed earlier this week. The company’s chief administrative officer, Craig Glidden, said that the current focus is on “resetting” the regulatory relationship and “building trust” and acknowledged “we still have a ways to go,” Reuters reported.