GM driverless taxi looks unlikely for 2019
When it comes to GM’s plans to release a driverless car by 2019, “nothing is on schedule,” said one insider source recently.
Reuters reports GM’s “Cruise” driverless taxi service has been testing on the streets of San Francisco, and that the automaker was hoping to get the jump on driverless taxis ahead of other brands, including Waymo, Uber and Lyft. Instead, it has hit several snags.
The vehicle is having trouble sensing whether objects around it are moving or stationary, which obviously is a huge problem for a car. Cruise vehicles are stopping and hesitating when driving by parked motorcycles or rows of bikes, and it has failed to recognize pedestrians and seen “ghost “bicycles, which also caused it to stop.
SoftBank donated US$2.25 billion to the Cruise project earlier this year, and more recently Honda invested US$2.8 billion, but so far it has failed to meet many of its milestone goals, including having the fewest number of human interventions compared to its competitors, and logging a million miles a month by early 2018.
Despite the challenges, however, “based on where we’re at and where we’ve been, we’re on track to hit” the 2019 goal, says Cruise chief executive Chris Vogt.
The technology the company used to get the taxi service to run smoothly will also be used on the production vehicles GM wants to sell to the public.
GM says the autonomous ride-sharing service will turn a profit quicker than selling autonomous cars to individuals because of the larger scale of the business. Owning an autonomous car, conversely, requires a wealthy buyer.