According to Reuters, on November 6th, General Motors announced that it plans to temporarily halt production of its fully autonomous vehicle, Cruise Origin. Just a few days ago, the company had announced the suspension of all its autonomous driving operations.
Reuters reported that Forbes was the first to report this move, citing an audio recording of a speech by Kyle Vogt, CEO of Cruise, General Motors' autonomous vehicle subsidiary, at a company-wide meeting. According to Forbes, Vogt told employees during the meeting that the company had already produced hundreds of Origin vehicles, and "they will be enough in the short term until we're ready to restart production."
A spokesperson for General Motors told Reuters, "We are completing the production of a small number of pre-commercialization models and then plan to pause." However, the spokesperson made it clear that "we believe self-driving vehicles will change how people travel globally, and Origin is an important part of that autonomous journey."
On October 24th, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's ability to operate autonomous vehicles in California and accused the company of withholding key video footage of a pedestrian incident in San Francisco. After having its license revoked for a few days, Cruise voluntarily suspended its entire fleet's autonomous driving operations.
In February 2022, Cruise petitioned U.S. regulators to allow the deployment of up to 2,500 Origin autonomous vehicles annually. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stated in July that it expected to make a decision on the petition within "a few weeks," but after launching a new investigation last December to examine whether Cruise took sufficient precautions to protect pedestrians, they began a new investigation last month.
