After a month in which the California DMV revoked Cruise’s permits for its self-driving robotaxis and the company suspended all operations, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt held an all-hands meeting on Monday to explain how the company plans to address concerns that its autonomous vehicles are not yet safe enough to operate. One of the first announcements was to halt production of a fully autonomous van called the Origin, which Cruise’s parent company GM had planned to launch in the near future.
According to audio of the speech obtained by Forbes, Vogt commented on the company’s recent decision to halt driverless operations across its entire autonomous vehicle fleet, telling employees that “because a lot of this is in flux, we’ve made the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin.”
The Origin pause is a major setback for Cruise, which has been under fire from regulators after learning that one of its cars had struck and dragged a woman who had been hit by another car, as first reported by Forbes. In addition, Cruise’s software had “problems recognising children”, putting them at risk, according to a report in The Intercept on Monday. The Origin is fully autonomous and has no manual controls or pedals.
The company has been hyping its Origin vehicle for years: in January 2022, Vogt told Forbes that the Origin would hit US streets in 2023, serving as an autonomous delivery vehicle when demand for robotaxis was low. In September, Vogt told an investor conference that the company was “days away” from mass production. And as recently as 24 October, GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that the car would be on the streets of Tokyo in 2026.
“As Cruise continues to push the boundaries of what AV technology can bring to society, safety is always at the forefront,” she said during the earnings call. “And that is something they are constantly improving.”
Vogt told staff at the meeting that the company had already produced hundreds of Origin vehicles, and that was “more than enough for the near term when we are ready to ramp things up again”.
“During this pause, we’re going to use our time wisely,” he added, noting that Cruise is in active discussions with partners and regulators.
“If we’re going to rebuild trust with those groups, we need to make sure that we have those discussions and that they hear things from us first and not from the press,” he explained. “So, frankly, because we’ve had some leaks of information coming out of this meeting, we have to be careful what we share out of this meeting or these efforts to rebuild trust could backfire.”
Cruise did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, General Motors spokesperson Chaiti Sen told Forbes that the company was “completing production on a small number of pre-commercial vehicles” and then, yes, the company was “temporarily” halting production.
“More broadly, we believe autonomous vehicles will change the way people move around the world, and the Origin is an important part of the AV journey – it’s the first scalable vehicle ever designed specifically for autonomous driving and will make transportation more accessible,” she wrote in an emailed statement.
