Cruise To Slash Workforce By Nearly 50% After GM Cuts Funding To Robotaxi Operations (techcrunch.com) 13
Autonomous vehicle company Cruise will lay off about half of its 2,100 employees and remove several top executives, including CEO Marc Whitten, as parent company General Motors shifts away from robotaxi development to focus on personal autonomous vehicles.
The cuts come two months after GM said it would stop funding Cruise's robotaxi program to save $1 billion annually. Affected workers will receive severance packages including eight weeks of pay and benefits through April. The restructuring follows an October incident where a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian, leading to the suspension of its permits.
The cuts come two months after GM said it would stop funding Cruise's robotaxi program to save $1 billion annually. Affected workers will receive severance packages including eight weeks of pay and benefits through April. The restructuring follows an October incident where a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian, leading to the suspension of its permits.
Robotaxis = cart before horse (Score:1)
THEN make wholly-autonomous robotaxis using the knowledge gained.
Crazy Musk was right (again).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
We'll see about that. I don't think Tesla is on track to have functioning robotaxis anytime soon. Only waymo.
It's not clear that Tesla is even ready for Level 3, let alone Level 4/5. Tesla figured out the easy part of AVs many years ago, i.e., how to get the car to drive reasonably 99% of the time. The remaining 1% is the challenge. It's even a challenge for Waymo, but it's something that Tesla is nowhere near figuring out.
There are two parts to this 1% challenge. First, designing an AV that handles corner cases is very difficult. Second, validating the correctness of that design is even harder. The specific
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sort of shocked that Tesla's stock has been so robust honestly.
It is true that they're one of the few (but ever increasing number of) companies making money selling EVs, but Musk has alienated much of his potential customers (with EV buyers leaning more "woke" than the average person in the US), and is facing real competition in Europe from the Chinese makers.
I still think dollar for product, especially with subsidies, the model y is one of the most compelling EVs, but I'm sure there are people that are
It's like a yo-yo. (Score:2)
Start up self-driving robotaxi project. Something goes wrong. Shut it all down. Oh, no, we need this. Start it back up. It's too hard to replace the people we laid off before. Shut it down again.
This is not how you run a successful company. You're either in it for the long haul or it's just a hobby.
they need to have the fast shutdown in place to be (Score:2)
they need to have the fast shutdown in place to be to escape liability in case something really bad happens.
CEO was let go (Score:2)
They must be serious if the CEO is let go. Luckily GM owns Cruise and will be there to hold their hand in the absence of their CEO. What could possibly go wrong?
GM: bankrupting itself, speedrun any% (Score:2)
At least we have Waymo in the US to compete with China. A monopoly isn't great, but at least it'll be a domestic company.
Slashdot not critical of top oligarch (Score:3)
There must be significant financial incentive for a blog which Musk follows on Xitter (Musk follows Slashdot) to stay on his good side to get the periodic retweet or like promoting the blog to his 200+ million followers, some of which are human.