Robot car firm’s motives doubted
Cruise drivers say food delivery ploy for test runs
Cruise, the San Francisco selfdriving car startup backed by General Motors, has called test drivers back to work to resume what it says are “full operations,” in apparent defiance of pandemic health orders.
The company, like others, stopped operating in March when San Francisco and other Bay Area counties issued shelterinplace orders. But it began using its fleet for meal deliveries to needy people in April, an essential service allowed under the rules. As a result, Cruise’s white Chevy Bolts, which always have two safety drivers aboard, continue to be a familiar sight on city streets.
Not all of the cars are delivering food. Some are what Cruise calls R&D vehicles that it said support the delivery cars. But some drivers say Cruise is using the food deliveries as a pretext to resume full testing, a charge first reported by the Verge.
“Safety is always our top priority, and we have been working with regulators and public health officials every step of the way to make over 50,000 food deliveries and
counting to vulnerable citizens in San Francisco,” Milin Mehta, Cruise spokesman, said in an email.
Cruise competes with Waymo, a sister company to Google, as well as Uber and a host of startups. Amazon recently bought a smaller rival, Zoox, for a sum reported to be more than $1 billion. The rivals are racing to create the perfect robot car, which depends on racking up test miles on city streets. Cruise cars logged 831,000 miles in the state from Dec. 1, 2018, to Nov. 30, 2019, according to a report it submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Autonomous vehicles had their learning interrupted by the pandemic.
In April, Cruise said it would deploy some autonomous cars to help deliver food for two nonprofits, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and SF New Deal. It allowed drivers, who were then on furlough, to volunteer for the paid assignment.
In June, Cruise emailed all its drivers, whom it calls AVTOs, for autonomous vehicle test operators, telling them to return to work.
“Final call for return to work” said a Cruise Google document reviewed by The Chronicle. “Cruise is resuming full operations and calling back all AVTOs,” said both the Google doc and the email, which also was reviewed by The Chronicle.
Cruise told The Chronicle it needed more drivers as it scales the food delivery operations, although its nonprofit partners said there had been no recent increase in deliveries.
The company also said it needs to deploy R&D vehicles to support its charitable food deliveries. For instance, it operates the nondelivery cars to confirm that its digital maps, software and hardware are working, it said.
But two drivers interviewed by The Chronicle said that’s a ruse to allow Cruise to log more test miles. The drivers said that food deliveries account for a fraction of road time and that they are doing the same types of assignments as before shelterinplace orders. The Chronicle granted them anonymity in accordance with its policy on anonymous sources because they feared losing their test-driver work at a time of recordhigh unemployment.
“We are in no way, shape or form supporting any food delivery,” said one driver. “This is a clever way for them to continue gathering miles in the endless quest to launch an autonomous vehicle.”
In asking drivers to return to work, Cruise said the California Department of Public Health gave it “explicit permission” for R&D vehicles.
It provided The Chronicle an email from the health department’s “essential services inquiries” section, sent to a trade group, that read in its entirety: “Thank you for your inquiry about Research and Development for Autonomous Vehicle Grocery, Food and Essential Services Delivery. These services are considered essential.”
The California health department said in an email that it “does not provide individual businesses approval for operation.”
The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which has jurisdiction in the city, said in an email that food delivery is allowed, but emphasized that “other autonomous vehicle testing is not allowed in San Francisco.”
It added: “If someone continues to violate the law, they can be shut down or face other serious penalties.”
John Coté, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, echoed that food delivery is allowed but other autonomous vehicle testing is not. He noted that San Francisco has the right to set stricter policies than the state.
“We’re not going to disclose specifics about any particular investigation until it is appropriate to do so, but we will take the steps necessary to protect San Franciscans during this global pandemic,” he said in an email.
Both the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and SF New Deal say they appreciate Cruise’s help. The food bank said Cruise does about 280 grocery deliveries a day to lowincome seniors, working Monday through Saturday.
SF New Deal, which pays San Francisco restaurants to prepare food for vulnerable people, said Cruise handles about 35 deliveries every day of meals to community partners, such as churches. The locations receive multiple meals, so for each delivery Cruise typically deploys two or three cars, which can accommodate about 40 meals in the back seat (the trunks are filled with its technology).
SF New Deal is backed by Emmett Shear, who cofounded videogame streaming service Twitch with Cruise cofounder and CTO Kyle Vogt.
“We’ve had a very positive experience with Cruise,” said Lenore Estrada, SF New Deal executive director. “Getting delivery drivers is so difficult and so expensive. If you have to pay for it, it decreases the amount of money you have to spend on food.”
Cruise, which has 201 autonomous cars and 556 safety drivers approved by the DMV, said only about 40 to 45 cars are now operating, but didn’t say how many drivers are working. It declined to say how many cars do food delivery as opposed to the R&D function.
However, drivers said that Cruise is running cars around the clock, including swing shift and graveyard shift times when food delivery would not occur. Cruise said it runs some of its R&D cars at night.
Drivers sit side by side in the Bolt’s front seats, one behind the wheel ready to take control if the car has an issue, and the other in the navigator’s seat taking notes.
Cruise took steps to help safeguard the drivers from contagion, including assigning them to the same partner every day, requiring temperature checks, mandating mask wearing, improving air filtration, and stipulating that cars be sanitized before and after each shift.
The drivers said they appreciated those efforts, but still worry about spending eight hours in a car’s close confines with another person.
“You don’t always know what their household looks like, what their social bubble looks like,” one driver said of his work partner. “There’s always this fear and uncertainty.”
In internal Slack messages reviewed by The Chronicle, several Cruise drivers discussed their fears of returning to work at a time when virus cases were surging.
San Francisco said its Community Emergency Response Team investigated a complaint of inadequate social distancing at Cruise’s Brannan Street headquarters, and found that the protocols were adequate.
Drivers also expressed concerns on Slack threads after a driver at Cruise’s South San Francisco facility tested positive for the coronavirus last week.
Cruise said it has a robust contacttracing program for anyone who has contact with infected staffers, which includes a mandated waiting period to return to work. It said it could close facilities and do deep cleaning depending on specific situations, without saying what it did in the South San Francisco case.
Cruise’s test drivers are employed by Aerotek, a nationwide staffing agency. Their pay starts at about $23 an hour and increases over time. They can also earn attendance bonuses that start at $50 a week and range up to $200 a week if they put in 40 hours. Cruise said taking sick days would not hurt attendance records to earn the bonus.
Drivers said they were grateful to be employed, but worried about the timing of being recalled to work just as virus cases are surging.
“I’d like to know that they’re operating within the bounds and guidelines of the law,” one driver said. “I want to make sure they’re not breaking the law and putting our lives at risk needlessly.”