An Employee Advisory Committee on Cruise’s Absence of Test Beds, as Ordered by the California Highway Safety Act (CLEP 2012)

The recent layoffs at Cruise, along with the other scandals at the company, have caused a downward spiral for the company. a front-runner in the race to automate driving. California regulators in October suspended Cruise’s permit to operate in San Francisco—home to its longest-running test bed—as they alleged the company failed to disclose details of a crash that sent a pedestrian to the hospital with serious injuries.

Kyle Vogt, the company’s co- founder and CEO, and Dan Kan, its chief product officer, have left the company. Nine more executive were dismissed yesterday, including chief legal and policy officer Jeff Bleich and senior vice president of government affairs David Estrada.

Following the resignation of Vogt, Mo Elshenawy, the company’s VP for engineering, was promoted to president and chief technology officer. In a memo to employees today, Elshenawy struck a sober tone.

Today, we are making staff reductions that will affect 24% of full-time Cruisers, through no fault of their own. We are simplifying and focusing our efforts to return with an exceptional service in one city to start with and focusing on the Bolt platform for this first step before we scale. We are decreasing the employee counts in our operations. These impacts are largely outside of engineering, although some Tech positions are impacted also. As you might have learned, yesterday, we took action to part ways with several SLT members.

A company spokesman said that affected employees were mostly in the company’s commercial operations division. She added that the company’s top priority was to “do right” by these departing workers.

Those who were laid off will remain on payroll through February 12th and are eligible for an additional eight weeks of pay. There will be two weeks of pay per year for long-term employees at Cruise over the course of three years. Everyone will receive an end of the year bonus, as well as extended medical and dental coverage. The full memo was posted on Cruise’s website.

What Are the Future Challenges of General Motors? A Letter to Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Marianna El-Shenawy

Last month, General Motors halted production of its purpose-built robotaxi, called the Origin. The futuristic vehicle, a six-seat cube on wheels, doesn’t have a steering wheel, and it needs federal approval to hit the roads because its unconventional shape means it doesn’t meet safety standards. In his letter to staff on Thursday, ElShenawy confirmed the company’s pared-down vehicle ambitions. He said Cruise would be focused on the Bolt platform, the conventional, Chevrolet- branded electric car that Cruise has used to operate for years.

GM is also putting its own people in place to keep a closer eye on Cruise. Craig Glidden, the automaker’s executive vice president of legal and policy and a Cruise board member, will serve as a president and continue as chief administrative officer. Jon has been named vice chairman of the board and serves alongside GM CEO Mary Barra.

GM has lost $8.2 billion on Cruise since 2017 but expects to lose much less going forward. In a recent call with investors, the automaker didn’t share specific cash reductions, but chief financial officer Paul Jacobson said it would likely amount to “hundreds of millions” of dollars.

GM has not yet pulled back fully from self-driving technology like some of its competitors. When interviewed in Washington, DC, yesterday, Barra said that fully robotic cars will scale faster than people think.

“Some of the challenges we just faced, I think, it was more not working with the regulators to help them understand the technology and then being transparent as issues happen,” she said. “But the technology had already been evaluated by a third party to say it’s already safer than a human driver.”

Cruise halted testing and operations US-wide. Prior to the crash, the company had operations inAustin, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, and plans to launch in Dallas, Miami, and Houston.