Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Cruise, GM's self-driving car subsidiary, is reportedly inviting potential passengers from Phoenix and Austin to join the waiting list to become the first Cruise robot taxi passengers.

Since June, the company has been operating a completely self-driving commercial robot taxi service in San Francisco, which means there are no safe operators behind the steering wheel. Last month, Cruise announced plans to add Austin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona to its service.

In a conference call on GM's third-quarter results, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company would continue to complete its first commercial driverless bus and distribution service by the end of the year as planned.

When Cruise first announced its waiting list to join the Cruise passenger Community (Cruise Rider Community) in San Francisco earlier this year, it promised an initial free ride. The company had previously said that first rides in Austin and Phoenix might be free and planned to start charging soon, but a spokesman told the media today that Cruise would immediately launch a completely self-driving paid service.

According to Vogt, the company began supervising and testing more than a dozen cars in Austin last month, noting that Cruise's mapping system was "as expected". Cruise plans to start with a limited scale, as the company builds more vehicles-- especially the Cruise Origin, a specially built self-driving car that Cruise will rely on to achieve its exponential size and the dominance of robotic taxis in the United States.

Interestingly, as part of the waiting questionnaire, Cruise asked passengers when they were most likely to use the service: morning, afternoon, evening or late at night. In San Francisco, Cruise is only open from 10:00 to 6 a.m., mainly because of California regulations. Cruise's main competitor, Waymo, has been offering commercial robot taxi services outside Phoenix since 2020, and the company operates around the clock. Cruise may not have to operate only at night when it is in Arizona.

Cruise said the company will share more updates about the running time of the service in the near future.

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