According to TechCrunch,Employees of Cruise, a self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, can now ride in self-driving cars operated by the company in San Francisco, There is no human driver in the front seat. According to reports, Cruise’s co-founder, chief technology officer and president Kyle Vogt was the first person to ride, and he advertised it on Twitter.
“At around 11pm on Monday night, we started an AV (autonomous driving car) for the first time without anyone in the car,” Vogt said on Twitter. “So far, we have been testing with people in the driver’s seat or passenger seat, so this is the first time. It started roaming the city, waiting for a ride request. At 11:20 in the evening, I used the Cruise app The program summoned my first car. A few minutes later, a Cruise AV (named Sourdough) drove up to me and stopped. There was no one in the car. I pressed the button to start the ride, The AV drove back into the traffic smoothly.”
Vogt also said that he requested five more rides that night. The ride must be carried out at night, because according to the regulations of the “Unmanned Driving Deployment Permit” issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMA), the company can only carry out unmanned operation between 10pm and 6am.
A week before Cruise’s first deployment of driverless vehicles, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said that the company is confident that Cruise will begin commercial driverless rides and delivery services next year. Cruise is still awaiting approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to be able to charge for robotic taxi services. Before that, only Cruise employees would ride Sourdough and other unmanned AVs.
Cruise told TechCrunch that it did not list a figure for how many driverless cars are allowed, nor did it have any updates on when it expects to obtain final permits from CPUC.