General Motors (GM) announced this week that it was financing its robotaxi project which was taking shape through the Cruise division. The latter, which was created in 2013 and acquired by the American giant in 2016, has had a difficult time in recent years as it tried to bring its Origin robotaxi project to fruition.
GM will instead seek to merge the Cruise division, as well as its technical teams, in order to create a single group which will concentrate its efforts on the development of autonomous driving. Obviously, the work will rely on Super Cruise technology which is already present with more than 20 vehicles from the GM empire.
Remember that Super Cruise is a very advanced semi-autonomous driving system, capable of operating over long distances, and even capable of overtaking autonomously or even serving a vehicle coupled with a trailer.
General Motors mentioned that the development of robotaxis required considerable time and resources, and that this was without taking into account the fact that the market was already very competitive in this emerging universe. Waymo taxis already operate in Austin, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, as well as San Francisco and Los Angeles, California.
And let's not forget that the next player that could make a breakthrough in the field is Tesla, with the robotaxi that it recently presented.
As the Car and Driver site points out, GM currently owns around 90% of Cruise and claims to have reached agreements with other shareholders to increase its stake to more than 97%, before trying to acquire all the shares. remaining shares. Once that's done, GM says it will restructure the division's operations by merging Cruise with other teams working on GM's autonomous driving technologies.
The company plans to complete this plan in the first half of next year. This restructuring should allow the company to save more than a billion.
Original content from auto123.
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