GM’s troubled robotaxi service faces another round of public ridicule in regulatoryhearing
General Motors’ troubled robotaxi service Cruise suffered a public whipping Tuesday from a California judge who likened the company to scheming TV character Eddie Haskell for its behavior after a horrific collision that scuppered its ambitious expansion plans.
The damning comparison to the two-faced Haskell from the 1950s TV series “Leave It To Beaver” was drawn by Administrative Law Judge Robert Mason III during an hour-long hearing held to consider a proposed settlement in a case in which Cruise was accused of attempting to conceal his intolerable role in an incident that resulted in the suspension of his license in California.
After a vehicle driven by a human struck a San Francisco pedestrian in early October, a Cruise robotaxi named “Panini” dragged the person for twenty feet while traveling at about seven miles per hour.
But the California Public Utilities Commission, which granted Cruise a license in August to operate a 24-hour fleet of computerized taxis throughout San Francisco, alleged that Cruise then did what Panini did for more than two weeks, putting the specter to rest lit up. of a potential fine of $1.5 million, depending on how the regulations are interpreted.
A new management team that General Motors installed at Cruise after the October incident acknowledged that it had not fully informed regulators about what Panini had done to the pedestrian that night, while also trying to convince Mason that the company was not necessarily deliberately deceptive used to be.
Mason became so irritated by Cruise’s mixed messages during Tuesday’s hearing that he went back to the TV series starring Jerry Mathers as the Beaver, which still shows up in reruns. “For some reason, Eddie Haskell popped into my head,” Mason joked to Craig Glidden, who now oversees Cruise as president and chief administrative officer.
Glidden tried to assure Mason that Cruise will accept her blame for what he described as an unfortunate “mistake.” Cruise came to the hearing and proposed to settle the case for $75,000, but when Mason claimed the company should pay at least $112,500, Glidden immediately agreed to that amount.
“We want to move forward,” Glidden said. He also reminded Mason that Cruise could still face other consequences outside California, with both the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigating the robotaxi service’s conduct.
But Mason indicated he would prefer to let the case continue throughout the hearing process rather than approve a settlement. The judge did not set a timetable for resolving the case.
Tuesday’s hearing came less than two weeks after Cruise released a lengthy report detailing the company’s mishandling of cases after the pedestrian was injured.
The report was prepared by the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan chided Cruise’s management, which has since been dumped for “poor leadership” and fostering an “us versus them” mentality among regulators. But he’s also been blamed for internet connection problems that prevent several supervisors from seeing parts of a video of Panini dragging the pedestrian behind him. The vehicle misinterpreted the situation.
In addition to parting ways with former CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt and other top executives, Cruise has also laid off about a quarter of its workforce as part of GM’s decision to roll back its one-time goal of generating $1 billion in annual revenue . the robotaxi service in 2025.