General Motors’ Self-Driving Taxis Delayed
» Posted August 28, 2019 • Resources | Share This Post
General Motors’ big plan for putting autonomous taxi cabs on the street is going to take a little longer than initially envisioned.
The company is not going to meet its goal of deploying the self-driving taxis by the end of the year, Dan Ammann the chief executive officer of GM Cruise recently said in a blog post. He added, however, that the company is working to scale up in San Francisco before expanding across the country.
“We are more than three years deep into our unique partnership with General Motors, which provides us with a multi-year head start on the seamless integration of hardware and software and related safety validation benefits,” Amman wrote in the blog post. “Today, we are the only company with self-driving cars that are manufactured on a large scale automotive assembly line to the same rigorous standards of safety and quality as any other production car.”
The news comes as Google’s Waymo has also fallen behind on its own plans for rolling out driverless taxis, according to Automotive News. It also comes a little more than a year after an autonomous Uber vehicle killed a pedestrian in Arizona, sparking new safety concerns related to self-driving technology.
Cruise is currently using roughly 180 test vehicles – electric Chevy Bolts – throughout San Francisco, according to Tech Crunch. The company is painting those cars orange and plans to expand testing across the city.
“In order to reach the level of performance and safety validation required to deploy a fully driverless service in San Francisco, we will be significantly increasing our testing and validation miles over the balance of this year, which has the effect of carrying the timing of fully driverless deployment beyond the end of the year,” Ammann wrote. “While Cruise is already logging the most miles in a complex environment, having our cars running many more miles on the road will further accelerate our rate of learning and safety validation.”
How the California Lemon Law Works
The GM Cruise news is the latest example of automakers sometimes getting over their skis when it comes to grand plans for rolling out new technology. At the same time, plenty of car manufacturers continue to have problems putting human-driven vehicles on the road in safe condition.
GM, for example, announced earlier this year that it was recalling nearly 370,000 trucks because of an engine block heater problem that could cause the vehicles to catch fire.
The good news for car owners and lessors in the Golden State is that the California lemon law requires car manufacturers to make various repairs to vehicles while they are under warranty. The manufacturer is obligated to buy the car back or replace it if those repairs are not successful.
Speak with a California Lemon Law Attorney Today
The California lemon law attorneys at the Bickel Law Firm have represented hundreds of clients in defective vehicle cases across the state. Our lawyers work aggressively to resolve these cases for the people that we represent.
Our offices are conveniently located in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Call us at (888) 800-1983 or contact us online to speak with a California lemon law attorney.
