GM's Cruise Asks White House to Dissolve AV Testing Restrictions

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

General Motors has a long and illustrious history of receiving government favors, with 2021 likely to continue the trend. Having recently seen its request to have federal EV tax credits reset approved by the Senate Finance Committee, GM-owned Cruise is now seeking to double down by asking regulators to scale back restrictions on autonomous vehicle testing. With practically every automaker simultaneously requesting government hookups on a weekly basis, it’s hardly surprising to see this.

What is unique is the rationales given for government help and it’s often the only way to measure their merit. While most claims tend to boil down to “ we need more money,” Cruise wants regulators to get out of the way so the United States can become more competitive against China’s AV programs and is hardly the first company to make such a suggestion.

Cruise CEO Dan Ammann reportedly issued a letter to Joe Biden on May 17th asking that the president back legislation that would increase the number of autonomous test vehicles a company can legally field without their needing to adhere to the existing federal safety standards. According to Reuters, Ammann stated that “without [presidential] support and congressional action to revise these self imposed barriers, the U.S. AV manufacturing industry will lag, AI development will stall, and our foreign competitors will race ahead.”

From Reuters:

Senators John Thune and Gary Peters have been working for several years on efforts to ease restrictions on AVs. An amendment to a bill designed to address U.S. competitiveness against China proposed by Thune to raise the cap stalled last week amid opposition from labor unions and plaintiffs attorneys, but Thune and Peters are expected to continue to pursue the issue.

Thune and Peters in April circulated language for potential legislation to grant the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the power to lift the cap and initially exempt 15,000 self-driving vehicles per manufacturer, rising to 80,000 within three years. The NHTSA would need to certify self-driving vehicles exempted are at least as safe as human-driven ones.

“China’s top down, centrally directed approach imposes no similar restraints on their home grown AV industry,” Ammann wrote. “We do not seek, require or desire government funding; we seek your help in leveling the playing field,” he said, referencing a study positing that AVs are “estimated to create and sustain 108,000 jobs over the next five years.”

Union concerns are at odds with Ammann’s own claims that advancing AVs will result in net job creation. But the point may be moot as increasingly more businesses are getting in on the action.

One issue that is more clear, however, is the incorrect assumption that China doesn’t impose strict restrictions on autonomous mules. Last time we checked, the CCP was eyeballing some fairly strict rules regarding testing protocols. Meanwhile, Chinese AVs currently have to be authorized by provincial governments before they’re legally allowed to run on public roads and vehicles have to first be tested in a closed setting with a certified safety driver to prove a level of competency. They are then given road transport permits and licenses prior to being deployed and informed of when/where they can be operated by regional authorities.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued updated national draft regulations in January that would allow more vehicles to be tested on public roads, including some without a driver. Though this also requires new safety assessments and approval from the relevant government entities, all of which require access to vehicle data. The Ministry of Public Security has been similarly pitching new regulations this year, most of which pertain to liability issues, cybersecurity, and centralized monitoring. As for those aforementioned liability rules, autonomous vehicles that crash with a human driver behind the wheel will see the human taking the blame. But cars operating without a safety driver automatically push labilities onto whoever owns it — which will likely be the manufacturer at this stage in the game.

So not having an official cap on the number of AVs that can be fielded doesn’t mean it’s running test cars without restrictions. If anything, China’s model seems to be evolving into something that’s more restrictive than what the United States currently has in place.

The right approach, however, is a matter of opinion. Deregulation often advances industries coming up with creative solutions and accelerates development. But allowing corporations to do whatever they want can result in unsavory behavior and public endangerment. Worse yet, legislators have shown themselves to have a pitiful grasp of practically every nuanced regulatory issue — though it seems especially bad whenever technology comes into play.

[Image: Temp-64GTX/Shutterstock]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Conundrum Conundrum on Jun 01, 2021

    GM has several joint ventures in China, flogs a coupla million vehicles, and even sends back the Buick Envision wrapped with a bow to the US. So if they think China is a better place to test out AVs, what's stopping them from doing some testing over there? Oh, I know, maybe their precious IP might be stolen by nefarious commies. What a joke. Honestly, this whole China is an enemy thing seems to be an entirely US manufactured xenophobia. It's OK to make vehicles and every conceivable consumer product there on the cheap, dump tens of millions of US jobs hollowing out the middle states and profit thereby, but as soon as it's no longer a one-sided advantage for America, up pop the squawkers saying China is out to take over the world. Which, so far as I'm aware has been the official US policy for itself since the end of WW2. "After World War II when the U.S. colossus looked down at the rest the world prostate after the war, we heard a similar sentiment from George Kennan, considered as perhaps the principal architect of postwar U.S. foreign policy: 'Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. … Our real task in the coming period is to … maintain this position of disparity …. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality …. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. — George F. Kennan'" "More recently and equally starkly at the end of the Cold War, the Wolfowitz Doctrine was enunciated by Paul Wolfowitz Under Secretary of Defense for Public Policy. It can be summed up in a single sentence: "We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."" Seems clear enough to me. So long as the US can run the world, the sky is blue. Should some uppity country decide to run things the way it wants to for the benefit of its own people, send in the Army to set them straight. Seventy countries since the end of WW2. Because I've met few regular Americans who seem set on world domination, one presumes it's the elites who set US policy and make money from it. So the patriotic propaganda machine is always geared up to keep Americans wary of any foreign country with an independent view that could affect precious profits. Anyone with a brain can connect the dots, except, apparently, Americans. China didn't steal US jobs, American big business gave them the jobs for free to rip off their own fellow citizens to make an extra buck for the corporate bottom line. And to hell with what anyone thinks, our bombs are bigger than your bombs.

  • SoCalMikester SoCalMikester on Jun 02, 2021

    is there anyone who actually believes china stole the jobs? it doesnt work that way.

  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
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