It’s for a good reason that you haven’t heard anything new about Cruise from General Motors in a while. The California Department of Motor Vehicles said Cruise was hiding video from an October hit-and-run accident involving one of its cars. The company immediately shut down all of its operations around the world and called back about 1,000 of its robotaxis. It has been a while since it has been clear how Cruise will start charging for tickets again. Still, the company will be back to work in Phoenix, Arizona, and tests could start as soon as today. Cruise’s manager, Pat Morrissey, told Bloomberg on Tuesday that the plan is real. It is very important to understand that “testing” does not mean a public beta test of self-driving cars or anything similar. The company says that cruise lines are using their cars on the streets of Phoenix to “make maps and gather road information.” Morrissey told the news agency, “As we try to get back to our driverless mission, this work—which is done with human-driven vehicles that don’t have any autonomous systems turned on—is an important step in testing our self-driving systems.” The program will start in Phoenix, but a lot more cities will have to join before Cruise can get back to the amount of service it had before it stopped last fall. On the day of the hit-and-run, Cruise was working out of Houston, Austin, and Dallas in Texas, Miami, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona. Bloomberg says that it is already in talks with officials in 20 big cities. However, Phoenix was reportedly chosen as the launch site because it already has cars, and Cruise’s request was welcomed there. Once the first part of mapping is done, Cruise robotaxis will start supervised autonomous driving tests with a human driver present to make sure everything is working right. Before Cruise starts making money, which could be a problem since it cost GM about $3.5 billion last year, it will take some time. Still, Cruise’s new CEO, Mo Elshenawy, has taken over the role Kyle Vogt vacated at the end of last year. Still, GM CEO Mary Barra said in January that the company is “committed” to its self-driving business.
