back to article Cruise robotaxis parked forever, as GM decides it can't compete and wants to cut costs

General Motors is winding up its autonomous taxi biz Cruise. A statement published Tuesday states the automotive behemoth hasn't given up on self-driving cars, but will be looking to build the technology – which it calls Super Cruise – into personal vehicles instead. The company plans to take the next six months to "refocus …

  1. b0llchit Silver badge
    Holmes

    Reality is at fault

    Another project, seen superficially a good idea, but really not such a good idea after all, met Reality and died.

    I'm sure the investors are going to blame Reality and sue the hell out of Reality real soon now. Reality should not be allowed to rule our investments. Reality is an abomination to our profits and must be decidedly prevented.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Reality is at fault

      Reality is a bitch.

      1. dippy1
        Devil

        Re: Reality is at fault

        I'm a VC/investor....What is this "reality" thing you talk of?

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Reality is at fault

          This bronze will never catch on. We have stone and that's good enough for Og

          1. b0llchit Silver badge
            Pint

            Re: Reality is at fault

            Don't know what you should use stone for. You cannot eat it so it cannot feed you and it doesn't burn and therefore cannot keep you warm.

            Please refrain from advertising stuff that is not food, sinks when dropped and cannot be burned.

            1. The Mole

              Re: Reality is at fault

              Stone in fire gets hot it doesn't burn.

              Drop hot stone in water, it sink and heats water.

              Water get hot and cook food.

              1. b0llchit Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: Reality is at fault

                Arrrrgggghhh! Dissident thinker detected! Throw him in the lion's pit!

              2. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: Reality is at fault

                Stone heated with fire gets hot it doesn't burn.

                Pour cold water on hot stone, it crack and break.

                Og has lots of smaller stones to build new cave and garden feature on Salisbury plain.

                1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                  Re: Reality is at fault

                  "Og has lots of smaller stones to build new cave and garden feature on Salisbury plain."

                  Stonehenge is a garden feature, is it?

                  Can I get one on Amazon? I have a bit of land and could earn a few bob selling cold drinks to tourists in summer.

                  1. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: Reality is at fault

                    yes ... for $9.95!

                    1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

                      Re: Reality is at fault

                      And its available in its home territory as well

                      https://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Your-Stonehenge-Mega-Mini/dp/0762443359?crid=2C14XJPHK1BXQ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t87s5AVVCEggjussl2FysKnaYPIvHfVgkJO19x8MeWHf1Yz1_F5Xzm3vbJX9jMMZ5tQTR71pezc9URIZIDsCam7yXspzjfT_rVtYPjKbT-qh3ng6EyGrhKnR6ltnw8O-WzBe3r9LxVbsnX2ZsAugjg.SoMcDUcWuycXW2o08cCJ3gn5QcwBHmuXjLmRxZpd8qo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Build+Your+Own+Stonehenge&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1734009124&sprefix=build+your+own+stonehenge%2Caps%2C87&sr=8-1

                      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                        Re: Reality is at fault

                        "And its available in its home territory as well"

                        What, and get really short dwarfs to dance around it for a mid-summer festival extravaganza? It would be as easy to store in the off-season as the Colossus of Moorpork.

              3. david 12 Silver badge

                Re: Reality is at fault

                Drop hot stone in water, it sink and heats water.

                Very rare method of cooking, and definitely not stone-age. Requires pot, and if you've got a pot, you can put it over the fire.

                Hot stones are sometimes used for steam cooking or baking. "Hot stones in a puddle" is not an effective cooking method.

                1. LybsterRoy Silver badge

                  Re: Reality is at fault

                  Leather or cloth can be used as a pot. I'm sure cloth would be post stone age but I'm not so sure about leather - really depends on what they were eating at the time.

          2. Bebu sa Ware
            Windows

            Re: Reality is at fault

            "This bronze will never catch on. We have stone and that's good enough for Og"

            Not entirely sure Og was out of his tree in that.

            I imagine expertly crafted stone tools and weapons were probably still in evidence during the bronze age at least until the advent of iron.

            I think that apart from gold and silver, metals weren't a feature in the pre-columbian americas but the Aztecs and Incas did seem to account for a respectable number of conquestadors.

            An arrow with a stone point lodged in the heart, or stone club to the skull just as lethal as any metal weapon.

            I imagine the thermal conductivity of copper and presumably bronze/brass meant its killer application was in the kitchen closely follow by its use in mirrors which must have been the bronze age equivalent of the selfie.

            1. collinsl Silver badge

              Re: Reality is at fault

              Even in the early iron age metal was still scarce enough for it to be a precious commodity - you wouldn't want to use an iron axe for example when a bronze one would do mostly as well for far less money, or a stone one could be made by a skilled knapper locally for peanuts.

              Until Iron became relatively easy to produce in the Medieval period you'd really only find it in use in rich noble's wars or in ceremonial roles. Things like a sharpened stake or a stone bit could be used in a plough of the time, and most other things could be bought but would be rare - you'd probably have one iron axe if you were reasonably well off, otherwise they'd be bronze or stone. And you'd maintain it of course - the shaft may break but you could replace that yourself, the head would keep going on and on and on, handed down from father to son until it wore away completely.

      2. Bebu sa Ware
        Coat

        Re: Reality is at fault

        Reality is a bitch.

        But incredibly hot in black leather....

    2. Apocalypso - a cheery end to the world
      Joke

      Re: Reality is at fault

      > I'm sure the investors are going to blame Reality and sue the hell out of Reality real soon now

      Her full name is Reality Check and she's a cousin of Laura Physics.

      1. MrDamage

        Re: Reality is at fault

        My last reality check bounced.

    3. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: Reality is at fault

      "Another project, seen superficially a good idea, but really not such a good idea after all, met Reality and died."

      There are lots of things like that. People get wound up with promises of tech that's going to do something amazing, such as bypass laws of physics or make going to work a thing of a bygone era.

      I was doing a lot of photo-journalism when DARPA held their Grand Challenge, an off-road autonomous race, and the Urban Challenge, a cityscape navigation contest. It gave me the chance to talk with the teams and listen to their presentations. What I came away with is just how amazing the human brain is and how we don't have a clue about automating a vehicle. Not much has changed since then. Certainly not enough advances to overcome some of the more serious challenges. There were some TV shows covering the events and they are a great watch if you can find them.

      Beyond getting the tech to work, which I see as still a long way off, there's also getting a business model to work. For a dense city center, a PRT system that is separate from roads that transits between major buildings and other public transportation might be a better fit. I envision an analogy to a blood circulatory system with larger vessels branching to small ones down to the point where somebody will walk the last 200m to their destination. For a medium sized city, taxis might have to do. In a small town such as where I live, automated cars are not possible. The roads aren't kept in great repair with clear markings. Some roads vary in the amount of asphalt to dirt ratio. It would take something more accurate than GPS to navigate autonomously.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Reality is at fault

        Yeah, it feels lik eit could only work currently or near future in a new city build around the technology. I doubt there will be many of them.

        Saudi Arabia's The Line might be suitable since based on the specs it's likely to have only a single two way transport system, most stuff supposedly being within a 5 minute walk (not sure how that will work in a 170km long city only 200 metres wide though. Travelators might be a better fit :-))

        1. toejam++

          Re: Reality is at fault

          They work well in retirement communities. But such locations are very small in size and speed is quite slow, so you get the benefit of a very well defined area and more reaction time.

        2. Bebu sa Ware
          Coat

          Re: Reality is at fault

          "a 5 minute walk (not sure how that will work in a 170km long city"

          If I worked at the far end of that city a 5 minute commute of 170km on a travelator might be a bit daunting. The thing would hurtle along at ~2000km/h but getting on and off could be the sticky part.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Reality is at fault

            And don't ever forget "The Roads Must Roll" :-)

        3. David Hicklin Silver badge

          Re: Reality is at fault

          >> Yeah, it feels lik eit could only work currently or near future in a new city build around the technology. I doubt there will be many of them.

          And that is the root of the problem: they tried to graft it onto normal roads by attempting to replicate how a perfect human would do it by reading the surroundings and acting accordingly - and it is never going to work especially while the Human Mk1 drivers are still around in droves.

          The only way a 100% driverless car is going to work if they use roads that are designed for them only with embedded systems in place to help guide them and each car talks to the others in a compatible fashion. But for the "legacy" roads the human would still need to be ready to take over, and at that point it becomes "what's the point???"

          It would be better if they sunk all the money they are pissing into the wind on self driving into EV cars instead to make them better and affordable.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Reality is at fault

            "The only way a 100% driverless car is going to work if they use roads that are designed for them only with embedded systems in place to help guide them and each car talks to the others in a compatible fashion."

            Agreed.

            Having seen how the Amazon Warehouses operate, with hundreds of automated carts, driving on a grid system, and which do not collide with each other, then scaling that up to a real road level, where human operated vehicles are kept entirely separate to automated vehicles, then clearly a two tier system, (perhaps literally on 2 levels, with automated vehicles operating on skyways, above the pavement or road levels) would be the logical way forwards.

            One could then use these same skyways for smaller public service vehicles, like small 6 person minivans, or even delivery bots, delivering mail order items, shopping, food, pizza, etc). And keeping such vehicles small and compact, means the infrastructure would not be too difficult to build, as it would not need to carry huge trucks.

            Plus, if there was an electrical supply system built into it, the vehicles would not need big batteries as they could run off the power grid on the tracks (maybe through induction?).

            I am reminded of the transport systems used in (IIRC) Logans Run !

            1. DJV Silver badge

              Re: I am reminded of the transport systems used in (IIRC) Logans Run

              With a few small changes, I am reminded of the Docklands Light Railway!

        4. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Reality is at fault

          "Saudi Arabia's The Line might be suitable since based on the specs it's likely to have only a single two way transport system,"

          That's been scaled back to The Dot. Masdar city was supposed to be a test bed for all sorts of efficiency tech with underground autonomous transportation, but those plans were also scaled way back.

          A 15-minute city sounds like a great idea, but anybody that's had a retail business knows that only some shops are going to do well enough to stay in business with a customer reach that short. Once people find that they need to go further out for some things, they might also find that a larger grocery in that same place has a broader selection and better prices. My local hardware store is good for some things and it's pointless to spend $10 in petrol to save $1 going to the big box store, but, the larger store has more selection and deeper stock. I just cleaned out my local store of a size of wood screws for a project I'm building right now. Maybe they'll be restocked in a week, but it might be two or more. Now take something more specialized and the amount of trade drops off too much to be sustainable.

    4. mevets

      Re: Reality is at fault

      There are many realities; sometimes part of the effort is to find the reality that matches your strength.

      Cruise had some wild abilities that other pseudo-driving-robots haven't matched.

      Repeatedly running over a single pedestrian may not be a great fit for the valley; but perhaps re-imagined as a steam roller or a weapon, it could find its niche.

      If companies keep giving up on bad ideas, how will we ever recognize a good idea when it pops up every 5 years or so.

      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Gimp

        Re: Reality is at fault

        I particularly liked the gridlocked parking lot full of autonomous vehicles beeping at each other all night. Endearing themselves to nearby residents.

        Smart enough to see a vehicle in front of them and politely ask it to move on, while simultaneously dumb enough not to realise it was driverless (and one of "ours").

  2. abend0c4 Silver badge

    May stop quickly...

    ... but not quickly enough, it seems.

    I'm not sure how technology they can only trust to operate in a "hands-off, eyes-on" environment is actually going to help in "delivering the best driving experiences". It seems to be the worst of both worlds - you need to remain permanently alert as a driver without any of the interactions that would help maintain your alertness.

    The original idea was that self-driving cars would reduce accidents and help manage congestion and the technology components were all about ready, but just needed integrating. Then it became obvious that the problem was harder than it looked, so maybe they could concentrate on urban transport in carefully-defined areas: like buses, only occupying vastly more road space. Now it seems like it's never going to work, but they've lost all this money so consumers are going to have to pay for it anyway - and be entirely responsible for its manifold failures until the carmakers have recovered their "investment".

    The technology that was promised doesn't work. The technology on offer seems to have very little practical use. Meanwhile, the practical alternatives still seem to be based largely on Victorian engineering. Maybe we can just join up all the individual cars and pull them with an engine.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      Re: May stop quickly...

      "Maybe we can just join up all the individual cars and pull them with an engine."

      That works great up to the point where the people in the train to go to individual destinations. In a winter rain, with their shopping, in a wheelchair. I'm not in a wheelchair, but I have a few decades on me and walking miles is getting to be harder and harder. What's burning my bottom is big money pit HSR projects being put forward when it's hard to get and from existing public transport. The busses from my town to the commuter train station don't start early enough to meet up with a train that gives me the best schedule. The busses also stop before the last train that makes sense gets to the station. That train station is also in a poor part of town so parking overnight, even though it's across the street from a police department, is taking a huge risk. This means for an overnight trip, I have to drive much further to a station with secure parking. Before those annoyances will be addressed, government(s) want to build much faster trains that serve fewer people on a very specific route. I'd don't see the flow chart that starts with "how do we get more people out of cars and onto public transportation" down to "spend billions on HSR". Is this too esoteric for me and can only be solved by underwear gnomes?

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: May stop quickly...

        government(s) want to build much faster trains that serve fewer people on a very specific route. I'd don't see the flow chart that starts with "how do we get more people out of cars and onto public transportation" down to "spend billions on HSR".

        Running express trains on the same tracks as stopping, local, trains messes up both of them because there are few places where the expresses can pass. As a result you either have to run fewer local trains, leading to the problems you describe, or fewer expresses so that people give up and drive/fly instead, removing the income needed to run the service.

        HSR gets the expresses out of the way onto dedicated tracks, so you can run more expresses and more local trains.

        The bigger question is why it costs 8x as much to build HSR in the UK than it does in France. It's not all down to environmental fanatics and their £100m bat tunnels.

        1. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: May stop quickly...

          "HSR gets the expresses out of the way onto dedicated tracks, so you can run more expresses and more local trains."

          If it was built for that, I'd agree. The Expresses don't even need to be HSR if they operate on trackage that gets around slower trains/stations. The spec for HSR infrastructure is so much higher and since existing services haven't been maxed out by investing in better/more tracks, more trains and the elimination of level crossings and other things that slow the trains down, Taking away all of the money for that so people using just a few stations get priority is frustrating. It's glamourous to advertise really fast trains, but for publicly funded projects, there's an aspect of serving the greatest number of people.

          If you look at a project like the one in California, the cost/waste is so outrageous and while there are some advantages to taking trains if they get you from city center to city center, Los Angeles to San Francisco isn't one of those places. The first section rumored to open is a train to nowhere. Getting out of the LA basin is very difficult so that's being put off until later. Getting towards SF means acquiring right-of-way through some expensive real estate so that's being "studied". There's also a major fault line that runs N/S through the state and it constantly creeps along so any tracks have to be watched. The number of flights from the LA are to SF are also cheap and numerous. A few years ago, I counted 44/day. Other than the time it takes to be strip-searched, the travel time will still be 1/3 that of HSR. Some places enjoy having loads of security theatre so invasive screening for HSR is also in place. The HSR would have to be nearly free to attract the most budget sensitive traveler and would need to extend all the way, not the abbreviated route that may not be financially viable to run. A better use of money would have been a train route from LA to Bakersfield to join up with the existing N/S service and get rid of the busses. It's an expensive and difficult stretch, but done right, it would be very useful.

          Brightline is supposed to be starting a service between LA and SF similar to the New Caledonia Sleeper. I call it going faster by going slow. I sleep great on a train so a service like that works great for me. I also wind up at a destination for a whole day cycle instead of traveling during that period. The Coast Starlight train does that route but leaves LA at 10am and arrives in SF (Emeryville) at 10pm (ish) with a similar time going in the other direction. That's a whole awake day wasted each way and since there's only one train per day, it's not like you could attend a conference/meeting and catch a train coming back right afterwards.

          yeah, another MD train rant, but I am a fan and always wish to have train service in the US at least half as good as on the other side of the Atlantic. The last time I was in Prague some years ago, it would have been completely pointless to hire a car. Everywhere I wanted to go was served by some form of public transportation with maybe one or two exceptions. I went from there to Vienna to meet up with friends for a pittance and had a similar experience getting around.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: May stop quickly...

      "The original idea was that self-driving cars would reduce accidents and help manage congestion and the technology components were all about ready, but just needed integrating. "

      I think there original plans assumed a rapid and immediate take up such that the majority of cars on the road would be "self-driving" and all taking to each other. They forgot to consider market intertia, huge up-front costs and the fact the tech companies REALLY don't like to co-operate on standards so Cruise cars were never going to talk to Waymo etc except to fight over who gets in front at the next junction :-)

    3. UnknownUnknown

      Re: May stop quickly...

      The hype has moved on, and is with AI (at the moment).

  3. Tron Silver badge

    This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

    I should be saying 'I told you so' as I thought autonomy was a huge waste of cash, there were too many variables for it to work, and it was a distraction from moving to EVs, but...

    All of the accidents that these things had, human drivers have. Apparently, humans are allowed to continue driving and killing each other but tech is not. Tech has to be perfect from the start or it gets banned. And nothing is ever perfect from the start.

    That double standard does not bode well for other projects, including AI.

    1. abend0c4 Silver badge

      Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

      I think that's too narrow a lens.

      The problem is not so much that humans also make driving mistakes, but, arguably, that we excuse those mistakes more readily for motoring than for other potential causes of injury or death. It took best part of a century to have reasonable safety standards for vehicles and in many places you're still held to a lesser standard of responsibility if you kill someone with a vehicle through your avoidable conduct than by other means. That historical laxity doesn't mix well with transferring whatever responsibility might remain onto the shoulders of software. You have to look at the social context in which the technology operates.

      And there's a similar problem with AI. It's of course true that people have double standards and prejudices and make mistakes. However, ultimately, they can be called upon to account for their actions and explain them. AI may make fewer mistakes and have fewer prejudices (though the evidence for that, so far, is not promising) but it can't display its working. That would be fine if there was an implicit assumption that you would need robust review procedures by qualified people - but if you need those people, the economic case for the technology is suddenly rather weaker so there's an incentive to "believe" the technology is infallible.

      I think it's wrong to imagine we can dispassionately reduce this to Benthamite principles: for better or worse we are not utilitarian creatures and we will only willingly adopt technology that can accommodate our natural contradictions. It's not a coincidence that some of the most enthusiastic proponents of both self-driving cars and AI have been accused of having sociopathic tendencies. The only way you can remove the human element from technology is to remove the humans.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

        "The only way you can remove the human element from technology is to remove the humans."

        That might be the end point when the input to train an AI is the output from another AI. No value judgements about what is right and desired by hoomans.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

        "That historical laxity doesn't mix well with transferring whatever responsibility might remain onto the shoulders of software. You have to look at the social context in which the technology operates."

        Or, to put it more succinctly, "blame".

        A human driver can go to jail, or be fined or otherwise punished for causing an accident. The victims or their families want and need that "closure". If it's just some faceless corporation paying out from petty cash, there's no one person to hang the blame on. After enough deaths and some sort of enquiry, *maybe* a scapegoat gets hung out to dry, many years later, the "rogue engineer" and no one is happy about the result.

    2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

      Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

      If you make too many mistakes as a driver, we ban you from driving. We should treat AI drivers the same - except that means the whole fleet gets banned.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

        Was or Cruise or Waymo that had a license suspended for a time? Although IIRC, that wasn't so much the result of the death as what was effectively a cover-up over the incident by not providing requested information and generally obstructing the investigation in the early stages.

      2. tekHedd

        "Too many mistakes as a driver"

        You have to make a *lot* of mistakes to get banned, though...they'll pretty much let anybody drive these days.

        If they'll let my mom drive, well... OK maybe I'm making the argument that we're too lenient rather than "let AI drive". If you can't drive at least as well as an AI that's sad.

    3. rcxb Silver badge

      Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

      Apparently, humans are allowed to continue driving and killing each other but tech is not.

      If you drag a pedestrian under your car, then lie to police while hiding the evidence that you were lying, you're not going to be allowed on the road for a while, either...

      Cruise isn't folding because their cars aren't perfect... they're folding because they're just not nearly as good as Waymo, and management apparently doesn't believe they can catch-up.

      Saying they're going to put the technology in private vehicles is telling... Sure it's going to have just as many accidents, but there you can always blame the driver for not taking over (ala. Tesla autopilot crashes).

    4. Falmari Silver badge

      Re: This raises a question over how we treat tech doing things instead of us.

      @Tron "Apparently, humans are allowed to continue driving and killing each other but tech is not."

      Well I haven't killed anyone yet while driving, but it's nice to know that if I ever do I can continue to drive and kill.

      "Tech has to be perfect from the start or it gets banned."

      Cruise's license to operate being cancelled is not the same as tech being banned. California authorities did not ban autonomous cars (Tech) if they had Waymo who don't have a perfect track record would have had its license revoked as well.

      Double standards would be if the California authorities had banned all autonomous cars based on the operating record of Cruise.

  4. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    Buy Waymo still going, right?

    So this is a case of "you can make a killing from shit tech on the desktop, but if your shit tech makes a killing in the real world, then it will be shit-canned."

    1. Dinanziame Silver badge
      Trollface

      Maybe, possibly

      if your shit tech makes a killing in the real world then it will be shit-canned.

      Maybe. Possibly. On an unrelated note, Tesla somehow gained 5% today

      1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
        Joke

        Note the icon ----->

        Once an autonomous vehicle has a proven capacity to kill it becomes impossible to ban it because of the second amendment.

  5. IGotOut Silver badge

    For those that keep saying...

    ...that humans have more accidents are completely missing the point

    If I'm a terrible driver and stop on junctions, run people over and generally crash into things. I, the single person can look at getting at the very least, taken of the road. I'm a single flawed person.

    If a robocar decides that running over a person repeatedly is ok, then every single other Robotaxi is ok with that, as they all use the same "intelligence" and components.

    If you think that's harsh, go fly a 737Max, after all, only two of them fell out of the sky

    1. cornetman Silver badge

      Re: For those that keep saying...

      I think the truth is somewhat different.

      When human drivers make a mistake and cause an accident, we can somewhat understand why. They may have been distracted, or under the influence of something or a range of things that we can empathise with.

      Robo cars are statistically much less likely to cause an accident. They don't get distracted, they don't drink alcohol or take drugs. However, when they fail, they fail in weird and unfathomable ways. Like just ploughing into the side of a truck that has stopped across the road. Or like the less dangerous situation where a car was hesitant to move into a junction because a cyclist was dithering around in a neighbouring road. Because of that, we have less trust in them.

      1. mevets

        Re: For those that keep saying...

        Oh, god bless you. It must be lovely in that bubble of oblivion.

        Robo cars are not better than humans, not even close, when you apply the ridiculously tiny restrictions killer robot cars can operate in to humans.

        Not every *kilometer travelled* is the same; and if you don't believe me, I invite you to spend a bit of time driving in a Canadian winter to get a bit of an appreciation.

        Volvo's multi-billion dollar effort couldn't hold a lane in an empty street in Los Angeles because the lines on the road were faded. During a demo! You can do anything in a demo!

        I've driven up Ontario Highway 10 on the Bruce Peninsula, in winter, where there is no visible cue to separate the road, ditch and farmers fields.

        With a crazy cross wind accumulated from Lake Huron.

        People from that area do it all the time; and yes, there are tragedies, but by and large, the rate ( incidents / km driven ), is low enough that it continues.

        Why?

        Because people are really capable, smart and adaptable.

        Robots aren't, and are unlikely to be for a very long time, if ever.

        1. cornetman Silver badge

          Re: For those that keep saying...

          Well I have been driving in Canadian winters for the last 17 years and I can tell you that most Canadians round here are pretty shite driving in snow. Every time it snows, it's like no-one has seen snow before.

          Other than that, yes there are situations where robo cars are hopeless. Fortunately, the vast majority of driven kms in built up areas are not like this.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Sora2566 Silver badge

    As James May put it succinctly:

    "It's all bollocks. Self-driving cars were invented ages ago. They were called 'taxis'."

    1. Bebu sa Ware
      Windows

      Old is new...

      They were called 'taxis'.

      I can see some dodgy entrepreneur leasing the contents of Cruise's parking lot and luring a host of undocumenteds to drive them as some overhyped rideshare service.

      Of course the whole lot will collapse in a mountain of debt with Mr Dodgy have taken the loot and skedaddled.

  8. HuBo Silver badge
    Gimp

    "a sad end to an idea once valued in the billions" ... really???

    Just think of the massive potential left in those near brand-spanking new, yet already terminally obsolete, rust buckets!

    • robotaxi drone dance in the desert (like "drone" fireworks)!
    • robotaxi demolition derbies!
    • cop-car acrobatics for an upcoming "Blues Brothers" movie's chase scenes!
    • agentic RAG fine-retuning by Evel Knievel to jump the Grand Canyon as a fleet, or backwards!
    • public art installations and sculptures à la Cadillac Ranch!

    The possibilities for tangible entertAInment are GPTliterally endless ...

    Edited to add: a new version of Deathrace 2000, without actors ... (ouch!)

    1. mevets

      Re: "a sad end to an idea once valued in the billions" ... really???

      +1: two care races. Same track, same time, opposite directions.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "a sad end to an idea once valued in the billions" ... really???

        Splendid idea! They could even re-train the robotaxis on pairs of macaques for extra strategic insights!

  9. Blackjack Silver badge
    Stop

    There should really be international laws about big companies electronics waste.

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Coat

      Tell that to Microsoft!

      1. sabroni Silver badge
        Mushroom

        re: Tell that to Microsoft!

        I fucking knew those bastards would be behind this!

        What are we talking about again?

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: re: Tell that to Microsoft!

          "Microsoft is among those in the blast radius of General Motors' decision to wind up its autonomous taxi business, Cruise.

          "In a filing made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week, the company said it expected to record an impairment charge to the tune of approximately $800 million in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. It will categorize the charge as "Other income and expense" and estimated that the impact would be approximately $0.09 to second quarter diluted earnings per share."

          https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/12/microsoft_to_take_an_800m/

  10. Ryan D

    Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you: The Future

    We envision having flying cars in every driveway shortly…. Signed the 1950s

    “They promised us flying cars!”

    1. Ozumo

      Re: Ladies and gentlemen may I present to you: The Future

      You can have one in your driveway, sure.

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