S.F. facility to welcome robot cars
Cruise will install electric charging stations at its fleet maintenance location at 640 Cesar Chavez St., shown in a rendering, including two for public use.
Robotcar maker Cruise plans to install multiple electric car chargers at a forthcoming fleet maintenance facility in San Francisco’s Dogpatch, including two that will be free for the public to use.
Cruise, which is majorityowned by General Motors, is now rehabbing property at 630, 640 and 800 Cesar Chavez St. for charging and fleet maintenance. The San Francisco company expects to complete the work by 2022 at the latest.
“Cruise filed the necessary permits to build one of the largest electric vehicle charging stations in North America to help power an allelectric, shared, zeroemissions future,” wrote Rob Grant, senior vice president of global government affairs, in a blog post Friday.
Cruise plans to start with 50 outdoor autonomousvehicle charging stations, a number that eventually could more than double.
The two for the public will be separated so that regular drivers don’t
which is also affected, have tacked on new fees to help pay for it.
Instacart’s business has boomed during the pandemic and stayathome orders. The company said it now has more than 500,000 gig shoppers, up from fewer than 200,000 a year ago. It added more than 150 new retailers and more than 15,000 store locations in 2020, bringing its total to more than 600 retailers with 45,000 store locations, Instacart said.
Prop. 22 gives gig workers accident insurance, a health care stipend if they average at least 15 active weekly hours per quarter and a guaranteed 120% of minimum wage plus 30 cents per mile while en route to and fulfilling a ride or delivery order.
Besides its gig workers, Instacart also has employees who do instore shopping. In January, it laid off 1,877 of them in the Midwest and East Coast, saying its grocery store partners wanted to use their own employees for shopping and have Instacart handle deliveries.
The layoffs included 10 shoppers at a Skokie, Ill., Mariano’s, who were Instacart’s only unionized workers. Their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, decried the move as “ruthless,” but Instacart said union status was not a factor.