Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors, is reportedly inviting potential passengers in Phoenix and Austin to join a waiting list to be the first Cruise robo-taxi passengers.
Since June, the company has been operating a completely driverless commercial robo-taxi service in San Francisco, where being completely driverless means no safety operator behind the wheel. Last month, Cruise announced plans to add Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, to its own service.
During GM’s third-quarter earnings call, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company remains on track to complete its first commercial driverless public ride-hailing and delivery service by the end of this year.
Earlier this year, Cruise debuted a waiting list to join the Cruise Rider Community in San Francisco and promised free rides initially. Previously, the company had said that the first rides in Austin and Phoenix would likely be free and that it intended to begin charging for the service soon, but a spokesperson told the media today that Cruise will immediately launch a fully driverless, paid service.
Cruise plans to start on a limited scale and gradually scale up as the company produces more vehicles – specifically Cruise Origin, a vehicle that will be used for the first time in the future, according to Vogt, who began supervised testing of more than a dozen vehicles in Austin last month and noted that Cruise’s mapping system is “as expected. – Cruise Origin, in particular, is a purpose-built self-driving car that Cruise will rely on to achieve its exponential scale and robot cab dominance in the United States.
Interestingly, as part of a waitlist questionnaire, Cruise asked passengers what time of day they would be most likely to use the service: morning, afternoon, evening or late at night. In San Francisco, Cruise only operates from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., largely due to California regulations, and Cruise’s main competitor, Waymo, has been offering commercial robo-taxi services outside of Phoenix since 2020, and the company operates 24/7. Cruise may not have to operate only at night when it’s in Arizona.
Cruise said it will share more updates on the service’s hours of operation in the near future.
