GM’s Cruise to start testing robotaxis in Phoenix area with human safety drivers on board

DETROIT– General Motors’ troubled autonomous vehicle unit Cruise said Monday it will begin testing robotaxis in Arizona this week with human safety drivers on board.

Cruise said it will monitor the vehicles’ performance against the company’s “rigorous” safety and autonomous vehicle performance requirements during the tests.

Testing will begin in Phoenix and gradually expand to Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, Chandler and Paradise Valley, the company said. The vehicles will drive autonomously, but the human drivers will be ready to take over as needed as the company takes a step toward resuming driverless operations.

Human drivers are important in testing the vehicles’ performance “and continually improving our technology,” Cruise said.

Cruise ceased operations in October when one of Chevrolet Bolt’s autonomous electric vehicles dragged a San Francisco pedestrian about 20 feet to the curb at a speed of about 7 miles per hour (11 kilometers per hour), after the pedestrian was struck by a human. -powered vehicle.

But the California Public Utilities Commission, which granted Cruise a license in August to operate 24-hour computerized taxis throughout San Francisco, alleged that Cruise then hid the details of the crash for more than two weeks.

The incident resulted in Cruise’s license to operate its self-driving fleet in California being suspended by regulators and led to a purge of its leadership – in addition to layoffs that jettisoned about a quarter of its workforce – as GM expanded its once exalted limited ambitions in the field of self-driving cars. technology.

A new management team that General Motors installed at Cruise after the October incident acknowledged that the company had not fully informed regulators.

Phil Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies the safety of autonomous vehicles, said Phoenix is ​​a good choice for Cruise to restart operations, in part because it has less stringent regulations than the San Francisco company.

The Phoenix area also has wide streets instead of narrow streets like San Francisco, and there is less traffic and fewer emergency vehicles, which caused problems for Cruise in San Francisco, he said.

“Good for them because they are conservative,” Koopman said. “I think it’s a smart move in their position.”