GM’s Cruise Hits a Dead End

And then there were three. General Motors’ decision to abandon its Cruise self-driving–car unit’s efforts in the robotaxi market on Tuesday is good news for Alphabet’s Waymo, already the market leader, and helpful for Tesla, which has ambitions in the market. (Let’s not forget Amazon, which is testing its Zoox robotaxis in San Francisco as well.) GM’s decision is a reminder of the brutally high costs of developing this technology, which over the years have forced out other developers, such as Uber and Argo AI.

GM has spent many billions on Cruise, the self-driving–car developer it acquired in 2016. Consider the bill for the past four years: GM reported Cruise’s operating losses totaling $5.8 billion between 2021 and 2023, plus $1.3 billion for the first nine months of this year. On top of that, it spent $2.1 billion in 2022 to buy out a former Cruise shareholder, SoftBank.