Now without passengers: GM has found a use for Project Cruise's retired robotaxis

After the high-profile collapse of the robotaxi project, General Motors has returned Cruise cars to the roads. However, now Chevrolet Bolt with autopilot no longer pick up passengers - they participate in internal testing of technologies that will appear on serial models of the automotive concern in the future.

Here's What We Know

According to the Detroit Free Press, a small number of Cruise electric cars are travelling on some highways in Michigan, Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area. All of the vehicles are being operated under the supervision of trained test drivers and are helping to develop Super Cruise, a proprietary driving assistance system already available on some Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet and Buick models.

The company clarified that these are internal tests and do not involve carrying passengers. The cars are equipped with new hardware and software.

For the first time about the activity on the roads was reported by the publication Wired, whose journalists noticed cars with installed lidars, but without Cruise logos.

Recall, General Motors bought Cruise in 2016 and expected to turn it into a profitable business with revenues of up to $50bn by 2030. Instead, the project has become a burden for GM - since 2016, the company has spent about $10bn on Cruise, with annual losses reaching $2bn.

The project peaked when robotaxis were operating in San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. However, in December 2024, GM officially shut down Cruise's operations - amid a high-profile incident in which a drone car dragged a hit pedestrian about 20 feet (6m) down a street in San Francisco. In the aftermath, the California DMV revoked Cruise's licence and GM fired a quarter of its staff and replaced management.

Rather than scrapping the build-up entirely, GM integrated some of the Cruise team into the divisions responsible for developing the Super Cruise system. This technology, launched in 2017, provides hands-free driving on motorways using cameras, radar, GPS and lidar.

GM is now moving on to the next stage - testing the technology to SAE Level 3, in which the car can drive autonomously, but the driver must be ready to take control at a moment's notice. It's a logical step after using Cruise as part of the more advanced but failed Level 4, where human intervention was virtually unnecessary.

So General Motors is continuing to develop unmanned technology - but it's doing so more cautiously and without loud promises, using the lessons learned from the Cruise project.

Source: Detroit Free Press