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Kyle Vogt, CEO and Chief Technology Officer of Cruise Automation Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, USA, on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Cruise announced a round of layoffs Thursday that will affect contract workers who worked on the driverless taxi service, CNBC has learned. The cuts include those who help clean vehicles, charge the fleet and handle customer support queries.
The company declined to share a specific number.
“Cruise has made the difficult decision to reduce some of the temporary workforce that supports unmanned ridehail operations,” a company spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “These temporary employees were responsible for duties such as cleaning, charging and maintaining the fleet, and we are grateful for their contributions.”
Cruise told CNBC that the layoffs reflect current supervised driving operations, adding that the company plans to resume driverless service but has no specific timeline to share.
The news follows a barrage of safety issues and incidents since General Motors-owned Cruise won approval for 24-hour robotaxi service in San Francisco in August. This week, Cruise announced it would recall 950 robotaxis after a collision with pedestrians. In October, the California Department of Motor Vehicles on Tuesday suspended Cruise’s deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles, effective immediately.
“If there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV may immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the California DMV said in a statement.
In GM’s third-quarter earnings update, the company said it had lost about $1.9 billion on Cruise through September of this year.
The DMV suspension came a week after federal auto safety regulators announced they were investigating Cruise after injuries to pedestrians. The investigation, led by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, was prompted by multiple reports of pedestrian and cruise vehicle injuries in recent months. According to the application, this concerns an estimated 594 self-driving cruise vehicles.
