Children Shouldn't Be Outside Anyway

Ah, well, nevertheless.

Reeling from a month in which the California DMV yanked Cruise’s permits for its self-driving robotaxis and the company paused all operations, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt held an all hands meeting Monday to explain how the company was planning to address concerns that its autonomous vehicles are not yet safe enough to operate. One of the very first announcements: pausing production of a fully autonomous van called the Origin, which Cruise parent company GM was planning to ramp up in the imminent future.

Whoopsie-doodle:

The Origin pause is a major setback for Cruise, which has been under fire from regulators after they learned one of its cars had hit and dragged a woman who had been struck by another car, as first reported by Forbes. In addition, Cruise’s software had “problems recognizing children,” putting them at risk, according to a Monday story from The Intercept. The Origin is entirely autonomous and has no manual steering controls or pedals.

It was totally working great, this miracle machine that would even impress Atrios, but sadly just going to delay it a bit.

The company has been hyping its Origin vehicle for years: in January 2022, Vogt told Forbes that the Origin was set to hit U.S. streets in 2023, and act as an autonomous delivery vehicle when robotaxi demand was low. In September, Vogt told an investor conference that the company was “days away” from mass production. And as recently as October 24, GM CEO Mary Barra told investors that the car would be on the streets of Tokyo in 2026.

...

Vogt told staff during the meeting that the company has produced hundreds of Origin vehicles already, and that is “more than enough for the near-term when we are ready to ramp things back up.”

Ramping is Elon-speak, making this extra funny. 

We now know that the Cruise vehicles had an army of Mechanical Turks running them.  What the hell did they have in mind for Origin?

Sure, Rishi.

Buses, grocery deliveries and farm machinery will be operating autonomously by the end of the decade under new legislation brought forward today.

Rishi Sunak will use the King’s Speech to pave the way for the introduction of “level four” fully-autonomous vehicles on the roads.

Paving the way to allow things which won't functionally exist, sure, why not.