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Cruise launches driverless robotaxi service in San Francisco

Employees of Cruise, GM’s self-driving subsidiary, will be the first to go behind the wheel of one of the company’s autonomous vehicles, which operate in San Francisco without a human driver. The public will be permitted to ride as well, but they will not be charged a fare.

Kyle Vogt, Cruise’s co-founder, CTO and president, was apparently the first to ride the self-driving car, and he bragged about it on Twitter. ‘Around 11 pm Monday night we launched an AV without anyone inside for the first time. Until now we’ve been testing with humans in the driver’s or passenger’s seat, so this was a first. It began to roam around the city, waiting for a ride request. At 11:20 pm I used the Cruise app and summoned my first ride. After a few minutes, one of the Cruise AVs (named Sourdough) drove up to me and pulled over. Nobody was inside the car. I pressed the ‘start ride’ button and the AV smoothly pulled back into traffic’, he wrote.

Vogt also said he requested five more rides that night. Cruise’s driverless deployment permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles stipulates that the firm can only run driverless vehicles between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am and at a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour. Cruise acquired the authorization in early October, allowing it to deploy its cars without a man onboard and collect fees for delivery services, but not for ride-hailing.

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Cruise’s first human-free deployment comes only a week after General Motors CEO Mary Barra stated that the corporation is convinced that commercial autonomous ride-hailing and delivery operations would begin next year. Cruise has yet to file for the final permission required to charge for robotaxi services, which would come from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Until then, Sourdough and other human-less AVs will only be used by Cruise workers and non-paying members of the public.

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