of GM Cruise is being repositioned a small fleet of robotaxis in Dallas this week as part of the company previously stated goal validate self-driving systems and regain public trust.
Dallas is the second city in which Cruise is easing its way back after pulling out its entire US fleet late last year, following an incident that left a pedestrian swept away by a Cruise robotaxi in San Francisco.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles immediately suspended Cruise’s licenses in the state after the accident and the revelation that Cruise’s leadership mishandled communications about what happened that day with state and federal regulators.
The Dallas fleet will be small – just three vehicles – and will not yet carry passengers or drive fully autonomously. As Cruise did in Phoenix in April, human operators will manually drive the cars around Dallas so they can collect mapping and road data. Next, Cruise will expand to supervised driving “measured against predetermined safety benchmarks,” according to a Cruise spokesman who did not specify what those benchmarks are.
Cruise had just begun testing its robot taxi in Dallas when the incident in San Francisco prompted the company to ground its entire fleet. Cruise had also launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin and Houston, making it something of a first-timer in the Texas robotaxi space.
As TechCrunch has previously speculated, Texas may be the next battleground state for the commercial adoption of autonomous vehicles. The state is already a hub for testing autonomous trucks, due to the state’s clear, sunny skies and favorable legislative landscape.
That said, Cruise will still try to relaunch in California, where it’s based, to compete with Alphabet’s Waymo. Earlier this year, Waymo got the green light to operate commercially on freeways in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The DMV confirmed to TechCrunch in April that Cruise was in contact with the company to begin the reinstatement process.
Cruise didn’t share details about its rollout strategy, but one thing is clear: Cruise is taking a slow and steady approach after its previous aggressive launch strategy led to accusations that Cruise was expanding too quickly and cutting back on safety.
