Supported by
G.M. Unit’s Self-Driving Taxis Are Subject of U.S. Safety Investigation
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into unexpected braking by cars operated by Cruise, a part of General Motors.
The main federal auto safety agency disclosed on Friday that it has begun a preliminary investigation into cars that a division of General Motors has been testing as driverless taxis in San Francisco.
The agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in a filing posted on its website that it had received reports that autonomous taxis operated by G.M.’s Cruise division had become immobilized on roadways, creating obstacles for other vehicles. The agency also said G.M. reported three incidents in which Cruise vehicles slowed suddenly and were hit from behind.
The agency said its Office of Defects Investigation would try to determine the scope and severity of the two types of incidents.
Regulators are increasingly scrutinizing autonomous and semiautonomous cars, and the claims automakers have made about them. The auto safety agency’s most high profile investigation in this area involves Tesla’s self-driving technology. Regulators are looking into at least 14 crashes involving Tesla cars driving on Autopilot that resulted in 19 deaths.
No fatalities or serious injuries have been reported in Cruise cars, but the auto safety agency said the vehicles could potentially put people at risk. When Cruise taxis stop unexpectedly, they “may strand vehicle passengers in unsafe locations, such as lanes of travel or intersections, and become an unexpected obstacle to other road users,” the agency said in its filing. “These immobilizations may increase the risk to exiting passengers. Further, immobilization may cause other road users to make abrupt or unsafe maneuvers to avoid colliding with the immobilized Cruise vehicle.”
The investigation covers 242 vehicles and is the first step before the agency could force G.M. to recall vehicles.
This year, Cruise began offering autonomous taxi rides in part of San Francisco and during low-traffic nighttime hours.
The company’s cars have “driven nearly 700,000 fully autonomous miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities,” a spokesman for Cruise, Drew Pusateri, said in a statement. “There’s always a balance between healthy regulatory scrutiny and the innovation we desperately need to save lives, which is why we’ll continue to fully cooperate with NHTSA or any regulator in achieving that shared goal,” he added.
Cruise was recently cleared to expand the service to the city’s downtown area and to operate 24 hours a day. The division has been preparing to expand its operations to Austin, Texas, and Phoenix.
G.M. and other auto and technology companies have spent billions of dollars developing autonomous driving systems with hopes of offering taxi rides, deliveries and trucking services to consumers and other businesses. Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, has been working on the technology for more than a decade and is offering driverless taxis in and around Phoenix. The company said on Friday it had started offering driverless taxi rides in San Francisco after receiving approval from California regulators.
In a daylong investor presentation last month, G.M.’s chief financial officer, Paul Jacobson, said the company believed Cruise could become a $50 billion business by 2030. “Cruise is an integral part of this and will expand to other cities,” he said. “They’re making really good progress.”
But progress has come much more slowly than originally expected, and some auto companies and investors have grown wary of putting more money into the technology because it may not produce significant sales or profits for years to come. In October, Ford Motor and Volkswagen said they would wind down Argo AI, the autonomous-car company they had invested in.
Cade Metz contributed reporting.
Neal E. Boudette is based in Michigan and has been covering the auto industry for two decades. He joined The New York Times in 2016 after more than 15 years at The Wall Street Journal. More about Neal E. Boudette
Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation
News
Autonomous taxis have arrived in car-obsessed Los Angeles, the nation’s second most populous city. But some Angelenos aren’t ready to go driverless.
Cruise, the embattled self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors, said that it would eliminate roughly a quarter of its work force, as the company looked to rein in costs after an incident led California regulators to shut down its robot taxi operations.
Tesla, the world’s dominant maker of electric vehicles, recalled more than two million vehicles to address concerns from U.S. officials about Autopilot, the company’s self-driving software.
Read More
An Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s Autopilot software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic chief executive?
Along for the Ride: Here’s what New York Times reporters experienced during test rides in driverless cars operated by Tesla, Waymo and Cruise.
The Future of Transportation?: Driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco. “The Daily” looked at the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves.
Stressing Cities: In San Francisco and Austin, Texas, where passengers can hail autonomous taxis, the vehicles are starting to take a toll on city services, even slowing down emergency response times.
A Fast Rise and Fall: Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, wanted to grow fast. Now, the company faces safety concerns as it contends with angry regulators, anxious employees and skepticism about the viability of the business.
Advertisement