As GM Cancels ‘Cruise’ Taxis, What Next for Autonomous Vehicles?

A decision by U.S. automaker General Motors (GM) to shut down its Cruise autonomous taxi project may appear to be a setback for the nascent industry.

Cruise was one of the early pioneers, receiving permission to offer a commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco several months before its rival Waymo. It had plans to expand abroad into the United Arab Emirates and Japan in 2026.

But after investing more than $10 billion and eight years in the project, GM said that it will no longer fund Cruise’s robotaxi development “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.”

Was it a five-star experience? One review of the decision was particularly scathing.

“In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies,” Cruise co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) Kyle Vogt posted on X.

Techopedia takes a deep road trip across the robotaxi and autonomous vehicle highways — is this decision a bump in the road, or has the industry taken a wrong turn somewhere?

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. China, Waymo take the lead in robotaxi services
3. Will the U.S. Keep Up or Take a Backseat?
4. Waymo Still in the Race
5. Personal Autonomous Vehicles Over Robotaxis?
6. The Bottom Line
7. FAQs
8. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. China, Waymo take the lead in robotaxi services
3. Will the U.S. Keep Up or Take a Backseat?
Show Full Guide
4. Waymo Still in the Race
5. Personal Autonomous Vehicles Over Robotaxis?
6. The Bottom Line
7. FAQs
8. References

China, Waymo take the lead in robotaxi services

Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said this week that it is teaming up with Tokyo’s largest taxi company, Nihon Kotsu, and mobility platform GO to bring its autonomous vehicles to Tokyo in early 2025 — its first international foray.

Expanding outside the U.S. into Tokyo specifically will allow Waymo to train its technology to adapt to left-hand traffic and the nuances of operating in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

It also takes Waymo into the neighborhood of the world’s biggest robotaxi market, China.

While Waymo claims the world’s first fully autonomous ride on public roads in the US, Chinese companies have taken the lead in establishing a large ecosystem of startups that are rolling out extensive road testing.

An early adopter, China has become established as the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) market, providing a basis for it to build on the technology to develop autonomous vehicles. There are robotaxi and robobus trials running in at least 19 Chinese cities, operated by Internet giant Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide, Toyota-backed Pony.ai, SAIC Motor, and Alibaba-backed AutoX.

With thousands of cars on China’s roads, these startups are rapidly expanding and starting to make moves into other countries.

Pony.ai said last week it has a deal with Chinese EV maker GAC AION to jointly develop a mass-produced driverless robotaxi based on Pony.ai’s seventh-generation autonomous driving system.

The companies plan to produce more than 1,000 robotaxis, of which the first batch is set to be completed in 2025. The plan is for the vehicles to initially be deployed in China’s Greater Bay Area region, with expansion to more regions and markets to follow.

Pony.ai currently operates a fleet of 250 robotaxis and has licenses to operate fully driverless vehicles in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. It has started to offer public-facing, fare-charging services without safety drivers in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. Pony.ai says its robotaxis receive more than 15 average daily orders per robotaxi.

This is key, as most of China’s robotaxi services are heavily subsidized by the companies and the government to encourage their usage, and some are required to operate with safety drivers.

Also last week, Apollo Go’s license, awarded in November, to trial 10 autonomous vehicles in Hong Kong came into effect — its first permit outside the Chinese mainland. Apollo Go operates in at least 10 Chinese cities, with its largest fleet of more than 400 vehicles in Wuhan.

Meanwhile, WeRide is working with Uber to deploy a fleet of robotaxis this month in the United Arab Emirates, its first foray outside China. There is more to come, as the company signed an agreement with French automated mobility operator Beti to launch robobus services in France as early as January 2025.

Will the U.S. Keep Up or Take a Backseat?

China’s robotaxi firms are obtaining licenses rapidly, whereas the U.S. authorities have been far more cautious in issuing permits. Some Chinese companies have been eyeing the U.S. market, but earlier this year, the White House proposed a ban on Chinese hardware and software in Internet-connected vehicles.

With Chinese competitors shut out and Cruise’s exit, Waymo now has the U.S. robotaxi market largely to itself — at least until EV market leader Tesla arrives. Amazon’s Zoox and Hyundai’s Motional are in development stages, well behind Waymo.

At its We, Robot event in October, Tesla unveiled its Cybercab robotaxi and announced plans to introduce an unsupervised version of its Full Self Driving (FSD) advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on select Model 3 and Model Y cars in Texas and California in 2025.

CEO Elon Musk said that the company would start manufacturing the Cybercab by 2026 or 2027 and sell the vehicle for less than $30,000 — which is considered a key price point to attract sales. Baidu said last month that it has managed to bring the cost of its robotaxi below $30,000.

With tens of millions of miles driven on U.S. roads, does Waymo still have a first-mover advantage over Tesla?

Waymo Still in the Race

Waymo currently operates commercial services using electric Jaguar I-Pace cars in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and reported at the end of October 2024 that it is taking 150,000 trips covering one million miles every week. That was up from 100,000 at the start of August and 50,000 in early May.

The company plans to start commercial services in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, in 2025, and earlier this month said it would expand to Miami in 2026.

It is worth noting that after a decade of promising to deliver fully autonomous, self-driving cars, Tesla does not yet have licenses to operate them on public roads, and its FSD technology has come under criticism for its involvement in a number of crashes.

In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. automotive safety regulator, opened an investigation into Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD after four reported collisions, including a fatal crash in 2023.

A crash proved to be the beginning of the end for Cruise, which reached 5 million miles of testing driverless cars across San Francisco. In October 2023, a Cruise vehicle hit a pedestrian who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver and dragged her more than 20 feet, causing serious injuries.

Cruise omitted key details about the accident in its disclosure to regulators, and the California DMV suspended its permit to operate autonomous cars. The NHTSA and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched investigations, and the company agreed to pay a $1.5 million penalty.

However, the accident damaged Cruise’s public reputation, which was already affected by Its vehicles blocking traffic and running into emergency vehicles in the city.

When Tesla does roll out its robotaxi rides, the vehicles will have human teleoperators to monitor them remotely for safety, meaning they will not be fully autonomous.

Waymo has fared better so far — a study the company published in November found that its Automated Driving System (ADS), used in ride-hailing app without a human driver, either in the vehicle or remotely, displayed “statistically significant reductions in police-reported and injury reported crash rates.”

Personal Autonomous Vehicles Over Robotaxis?

It is clear from the massive investments and government subsidies that robotaxis is far from profitable in its own right.

Analysts at Jefferies take the view that autonomous taxi services are likely to stay “immaterial in the near term”. They calculate that Waymo has a share of around 6% of ride-hailing trips in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, representing only 0.3% of U.S. rideshares.

“Even if WaymoOne was to continue growing at a pace of ~2.5 million rides every three months, we estimate it would still capture less than 1% of U.S. rideshare by the end of 2026,” they stated in a research note issued last month.

However, this does not necessarily mean automakers see autonomous driving technology as a loss maker.

In announcing the end of Cruise, GM said that it plans to combine the company’s technical teams with its own into a single effort to prioritize the development of ADAS on a path to fully autonomous privately-owned personal vehicles. GM intends to build on its Super Cruise “hands-off, eyes-on” driving feature, which it offers in more than 20 vehicle models and currently logs over 10 million miles per month.

GM rival Ford has already taken this route. In 2022, Ford and Volkswagen shut down their Argo AI robotaxi project, which had been operating since 2017 and had recently started ride-hailing services in Austin, stating that profitability was “a long way off”.

Having invested $1 billion, Ford said that it would instead focus on developing a “hands-off, eyes-off” autonomous driving system for its consumer vehicles.

Advancing ADAS for passenger cars may be the more familiar choice for automakers, but they will need to move fast to stay ahead of their competitors. Aside from Tesla’s FSD, Mercedes already offers “hands-off, eyes-off” functionality.

The established automakers appear to be making the call that they would rather continue selling private cars while waiting for autonomous technologies to evolve.

While billed as a robotaxi, Tesla is hedging its bets with the Cybercab, envisioning consumers buying it as a private personal vehicle, which they could then use to participate in ride-hailing services to make some extra cash.

Part of the reason for this is the transition towards software-defined vehicles (SDVs), which use software rather than mechanical and hardware components to manage and upgrade a vehicle’s functions. Software-led car designs allow automakers to sell over-the-air upgrades and digital services — creating new potential revenue streams.

An Automotive 2035 study published by the IBM Institute for Business Value last week indicated that 74% of auto executives expect vehicles will be software-defined and AI-powered in 2035. And they expect 51% of their revenue will come from recurring digital and software-related services — such as premium connectivity, vehicle subscriptions, software-defined functional upgrades, and autonomous driving — up from 15% today.

Around 65% of executives said customers will expect autonomous driving features, generating $269 in monthly recurring revenue per driver in 2035. However, they expect limited adoption of advanced levels of autonomy where human override is optional or not involved.

“Even if the technical challenges for high-level autonomous driving are cleared, regulatory issues and societal acceptance take more time and effort,” said Kenichi Takagi, Vice President, Connected Systems R&D, Denso International America.

The Jefferies analysts similarly noted that regulation could prove to be a barrier to adoption in the US, as “an act of Congress would likely be required to standardize autonomous vehicle licensing nationwide, given regulatory authority of the driver falls under state jurisdiction.”

The analysts believe autonomous vehicle developers “will ultimately choose to partner rather than pursue standalone fleets, given rideshare players can help robotaxis maximize utilization, optimize logistics/pricing, address barriers to changing preferences, provide fleet management expertise, and help navigate/establish local regulation… Our analysis of robotaxi unit economics shows that significant progress is needed on vehicle/hardware costs and utilization for robotaxis to match the profitability of gig workers.”

The Bottom Line

Robotaxi services are becoming a reality for early adopters, led by Chinese EV players and Waymo in the US, which are exhibiting rapid growth in ride numbers in select cities.

The demise of Cruise points to the costs and other challenges involved in developing fully autonomous taxi services but leaves opportunities for other pioneers to step in. It also indicates the possibilities for autonomous private vehicles, keeping the vision of self-driving cars intact.

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