Cruise Autonomous Vehicles Recalled
General Motors’ Cruise autonomous division has had a rough few weeks. First, the company temporarily shuttered operations while it determined why its vehicles kept running into things. Earlier this week, Cruise announced a pause in production of its autonomous van, and now, the NHTSA is getting involved with a recall.
Cruise is recalling 950 of its driverless vehicles and said that it might add more to the pile. The action follows an accident in which a Cruise taxi hit a pedestrian and involves the cars’ collision detection subsystem, which could improperly respond after an accident. The company will issue an over-the-air software update to fix the issue, and Cruise said all vehicles will be repaired before returning to the roads.
Even after the fixes, Cruise won’t be able to resume operations without showing some progress in figuring out how things went wrong. California, long an ally of advancements like autonomous vehicles, ordered the company to pull its vehicles from state roads, and Cruise is facing multiple federal investigations into the safety of its vehicles and how it handles accidents.
All of this is a long way to say, again, that autonomous vehicles are nowhere near becoming mainstream. Even if the regulatory hurdles can be cleared, public trust will take time to recover, and consumer-ready semi-autonomous driving systems like Ford’s Blue Cruise and GM’s Super Cruise are good enough that many people likely won’t care about transitioning to a fully autonomous vehicle.
[Image: IV Olga via Shutterstock]
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Chris grew up in, under, and around cars, but took the long way around to becoming an automotive writer. After a career in technology consulting and a trip through business school, Chris began writing about the automotive industry as a way to reconnect with his passion and get behind the wheel of a new car every week. He focuses on taking complex industry stories and making them digestible by any reader. Just don’t expect him to stay away from high-mileage Porsches.
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The story I saw yesterday said that the vehicles with safety drivers aboard could receive the OTA update and continue operating, while the ones without safety drivers would be recalled.
It's funny, you don't hear anything about Waymo's vehicles - are they not having any problems?
GM's cruise is a $50 billion disaster, 100% on the empty head of idiot Mary Barra. You would expect more even from this pathetic, socially promoted, poorly educated (GM.. Institute grad? Give me a break) GM insider of insiders.
Thats what affirmative action hires instead of MERITOCRACY gets you, idiots.
Bummer, since one might argue that Cruise wasn't really responsible. Says a lot that authorities decided to draw the line. More 'bad news' may be coming GM's way. The UK just decided to hold automakers accountible and not the driver when something happens with an AV. By doing so, the UK upped the ante as far as going for truly SAE Level 5 self-driving vehicles, not for some L4 in-between grey zone. Not everything needs to be lost however, as long as developers realize that it is the transport mode that matters more than they have been doing thus far.
How does a company issue a recall to ITSELF?