Cruise LLC, an autonomous vehicle company majority-owned by General Motors (NYSE: GM), will soon deploy self-driving cars on Houston streets.
Kyle Vogt, the CEO of Cruise, tweeted on May 10 that the company would bring its autonomous taxis to Houston and Dallas in the next few months. Cruise also posted a form for people interested in joining the waitlist for the robotaxi service.
"Supervised autonomous driving will start in Houston in a few days, with Dallas to follow soon after," Vogt said.
When Cruise enters a new city, it begins by mapping the roadways — including bike lanes, school zones and more — and giving its employees rides in limited areas during limited hours, usually at night, Vogt said in a December 2022 blog post. The company also works with first responders to make sure they're prepared for the autonomous vehicles on the road.
Cruise operates in only three other cities: San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin. The company started offering driverless rides in San Francisco in June 2022 after earning the first-ever Driverless Deployment Permit from the California Public Utilities Commission. Cruise’s fleet of Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles began navigating Austin’s streets in late December.
Backed by General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), Honda (NYSE: HMC), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), T. Rowe Price (Nasdaq: TROW) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT), the company shared on its website that it has raised $10 billion in funding to develop and roll out its services.
Cruise was founded in 2013 and GM bought a majority stake in 2016. GM has poured more than $3 billion into its Cruise investment after buying out SoftBank’s equity in 2022.
Cruise has a fleet of roughly 300 all-electric AVs, powered 100% by renewable energy.
The company emphasizes the fact that it focuses on safety, with Vogt noting in the December 2022 blog post that the "vehicles are equipped with a 360 view of the world and have the ability to react quickly and intelligently to whatever they encounter on the road. We test our vehicles using simulations, so that by the time they hit the road in your city they’ve experienced millions of possible scenarios and driven many millions of virtual miles."
Not only do Cruise's cars drive the speed limit and come to a complete stop at every stop sign, but they also detect and respond to emergency vehicles' sirens and flashing lights as well as the fold-out signs on school buses, Vogt said in the blog post. They also react to people using scooters, riding in bike lanes or driving on the wrong side of the road. In the rare case that a Cruise vehicle encounters a situation it doesn't know how to deal with, it will pull over to the side of the road.
"Our guiding mission has always been to improve road safety, reduce emissions, and reduce congestion with our driverless ride-hail service in cities, which is where we’ll see the most significant positive impact the soonest," a Cruise spokesperson said in an email. "Houston and Dallas are committed to reducing traffic deaths as part of their Vision Zero commitments, and we are excited to operate in and partner with these new communities in this shared mission."
Previous reporting from the Phoenix Business Journal's Andy Blye and the Austin Business Journal's Mike Christen was used in this report.
