General
February 14, 2019
8 minutes read

GM Cruise Is Short Of Self-Driving Miles Predictions

GM Cruise CEO Dan Ammann (right) with Cruise Automation co-founders Kyle Vogt (center) and Daniel Kan (left). image : General…

GM Cruise CEO Dan Ammann (right) with Cruise Automation co-founders Kyle Vogt (center) and Daniel Kan (left).

image : General Motors

According to a report released on Wednesday by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), GM Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving unit, clogged 450,000 self-driving miles all of last year in California where it does the bulk of its testing. This falls short of a prediction made by Cruise co-founder and then CEO Kyle Vogt 14 months ago, when GM told investors it was on the edge of putting 1 million miles on its self-driving test cars each month.

According to the report, self-driving leader Waymo clogged 1.2 million test miles in California in all of last year, a more than triple from 352,000 miles in 2017. But for consideration, Cruise was launched in 2013 compared to Waymo which clocks a decade old this year. Along with this two, other companies that test self-driving cars in the state of California include Nuro – which just raised $940 million from Softbank, TuSimple – which just raised $95 million Series D funding, Apple, Bosch, Baidu, Aurora, Ford, AutoX, Honda, Lyft, NIO, Drive.ai, Pony.ai, Udacity, Samsung and Tesla.

A self-driving GM Chevrolet Tahoe nicknamed The “Boss”, claimed the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge (the world’s most popular driverless car race). Many driverless vehicle operators including GM Cruise, Aurora and Udacity can trace its origins to the DARPA Urban Challenge. The founders of these companies were participants in the tournament.

image : General Motors

The mileage forecast made by Kyle Vogt – who was replaced by former GM president Dan Ammann as CEO in November – can be termed as widely ambitious, in a highly competitive and safety-prone autonomous car space. Nevertheless, Cruise has well increased the number of miles driven by its vehicles without the need of human intervention. It recorded 5,205 miles between “disengagements” (number of times drivers where forced to take control of their self-driving vehicles) for last year, only second to Waymo 11,017 miles.

The self-driving scene counts as a hot one now, with significant efforts being put into this space. Just this week, two new unicorns – Nuro and TuSimple – sprung up from the self-driving industry, after raising over $1 billion between them. Several companies have placed focus on different uses for driverless vehicles, for example, TuSimple focuses on trucks, Nuro focuses on grocery delivery, Waymo focuses on human transportation.

An interior view of The “Boss”, the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge winner. The autonomous vehicle assembled by the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) team navigated a 60-mile course without a driver or remote control in an urban setting complete with factors like speed limits, stop signs, busy intersections and merging traffic.

image : General Motors

Waymo is said to have met with more than 12 auto companies for driverless tech partnership, signalling significant efforts to dominate in the industry. The Alphabet owned division clocked 10 million total test miles on public roads in October and also set up a Chinese subsidiary last year. Likewise, GM Cruise recently partnered with DoorDash for food deliveries with self-driving vehicles.

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