Cruise fires 900 workers, while Waymo pulls out ahead

It’s gone from bad to worse for robotaxi company Cruise in the fallout of the October incident involving a pedestrian. The company has now announced it is laying off 900 workers, one day after firing nine executives. Meanwhile, rival company Waymo pulls out ahead with new services.

Yesterday, Cruise president and chief technology officer Mo Elshenawy announced the layoffs to staff in an email, which is now published on Cruise’s website. He wrote that the GM-owned company is laying 24% of its staff and dramatically scaling back on its future plans.

In the email, Elshenawy explains that the cuts are mostly in operations, and that the company will focus on “exceptional service in one city to start with,” although didn’t specify which city that will be. He also said that the company will focus on perfecting parent company GM’s Bolt platform, and relaunch the L4 ride-haul service in one city before scaling, a huge shift in strategy from its plans earlier this year to scale to a dozen new cities. Those plans, of course, have been shelved.

“We knew this day was coming, but that does not make it any less difficult – especially for those whose jobs are affected,” Elshenawy wrote in the email. “As we’ve shared, our goal is to focus our work on a fully driverless L4 service that meets a new AV performance bar, prioritize the Bolt platform, relaunch ridehail in one city to start, and enhance our safety standards and processes before we scale. We are ceasing work on the Origin MY24 but not losing sight of our work on future programs.”  

All the terrible news coming from Cruise has given Waymo some room to jump out ahead: After it introduced its driverless taxis to areas in Los Angeles, it has expanded its service to San Francisco in addition to adding robotaxis to the Uber app in Phoenix. Also, Waymo just launched its curbside service for to and fro trips to the Phoenix airport. Of course, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for Waymo either, which has had its own layoffs and backlash, mostly for blocking traffic. One incident reportedly involved five Waymo vehicles stalling on one street in San Francisco due to dense fog.

As for Cruise, the company’s has been in a downward spiral since October 2 when a Cruise robotaxi dragged a San Francisco pedestrian more than 20 feet before braking – the pedestrian was first hit by a human-driving car before being flung into the path of a Cruise vehicle. California’s Department of Motor Vehicles quickly pulled Cruise’s operating permit, and accused Cruise of withholding part of the video footage of the crash. 

A few weeks later, Cruise voluntarily paused all of its operations. Meanwhile, a federal probe and independent investigations also dug up internal documents that detailed the vehicle’s algorithm had trouble identifying children, which the company staff were aware of but still kept its fleet of 950 robotaxis was still on the streets.

CEO and founder Kyle Vogt resigned on November 19, and Wednesday Cruise announced it was firing nine executives. The company is facing a potential $1.5 million in fines and additional sanctions over its failure to disclose details.