Traffic is a pain. But perhaps it's a bit less painful if you've got a robot doing the driving.
That could soon be the case as Cruise LLC, the electric, self-driving, ridehail company backed by General Motors and Honda, gets ready to launch its services in Austin and Phoenix later this year.
In a Sept. 12 Twitter post, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt teased the new markets rollout, but he stopped short of specific dates for when the service may be available to the public in the two cities.
"Our team is going from zero footprint in Austin (no test vehicles or maps) to driverless rides in ~90 days. We’ve been prepping for scaling the last couple years, glad to see that work paying off," he wrote.
The southwest expansion comes a few months after Cruise announced it got the first-ever driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to start offering paid rides to the public in its hometown of San Francisco.
While it will be Cruise's first foray into Austin, it's been operating a self driving delivery service with Walmart for several months and has made around 10,000 deliveries, the company said.
While Cruise is at the forefront of autonomous vehicle rides for the public, it's just the latest company to put its self-driving cars on Austin streets. A unit of Google that later became Waymo was the first to test computer-driven vehicles in Austin back in 2015. Then, in 2019, Ford announced it would put self-driving taxis on Austin streets and began an extensive testing program in partnership with Argo AI and Lyft.
Meanwhile, Argo is working on a pilot program for autonomous grocery delivery in Austin.
The Argo/Lyft rides are slated to start in Austin this year, though it's unclear when the first rides will occur.
