General Motors will stop funding its Cruise robotaxi business and focus on developing self-driving technology for personal vehicles, the automaker said in a statement on Tuesday.
The company noted that it had made this decision in view of “the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business” as well as increased competition in the robotaxi market.
“Given the considerable time and expense required to scale a robotaxi business and an increasingly competitive market, combining forces would be more efficient and therefore consistent with our capital allocation priorities,” General Motors CEO Mary Barra said on a conference call shortly after the announcement.
General Motors said it expects that, once the restructuring is completed in the first half of 2025, the automaker will see a reduction in spending of $1 billion annually.
Barra noted that General Motors would work with Cruise’s executives on the changes, and GM said it planned to combine both Cruise’s and GM’s technical teams as part of the decision. It’s unclear how roles in the rest of the organization will be impacted.
On the conference call with analysts, Barra said that General Motors had not yet determined how many Cruise employees would be moving over to the Detroit-based automaker. “We have work to do,” Barra added.
Over the years since 2016, when GM acquired the robotaxi startup, the automaker has plowed more than $10 billion into Cruise.
General Motors had grounded its fleet at the end of last year after an incident in which one of its robotaxis ran over a pedestrian, then dragged the woman for 20 feet. Regulators had accused the company of withholding important details of the incident, leading Cruise to voluntarily pull its vehicles off the streets. Until now, the company had said it was still committed to relaunching the robotaxi business and had been testing its fleet again in Houston and other cities.