Cruise Begins Layoffs After Pedestrian Collision

Table Of Content

• Billionaire Telegram CEO says he was attacked in SF after 2014 Jack Dorsey meeting
• Cruise lays off nearly a quarter of its staff after grounding its robotaxi fleet
• ‘Trust nurses, not AI’: Workers protest use of artificial intelligence at Kaiser hospitals
• Cruise begins layoffs, starting with workers who supported driverless operations
• General Motors Layoffs 2023: What to Know About the Latest Cruise Job Cuts
• Naked Short Selling? Citadel Says DJT Stock CEO Devin Nunes Is Just a 'Loser.'
• Lucid slashes prices for its luxury EVs for the third time in seven months

This week, Cruise leadership tried to rally their employees and regroup after numerous obstacles and setbacks in recent weeks. The company also said that all employees, regardless of whether they were laid off, will receive their January 15th vesting through its employee share-selling program. Cruise did not respond to Insider's request for comment on the potential layoffs of full time employees. A former senior business analyst for Sony Electronics, Josh Enomoto has helped broker major contracts with Fortune Global 500 companies. Over the past several years, he has delivered unique, critical insights for the investment markets, as well as various other industries including legal, construction management, and healthcare.

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GM’s driverless car subsidiary has announced a round of layoffs this week, with the CEO Kyle Vogt reportedly telling employees in an all-hands meeting. Plus, investigations have dredged up some incriminating news that the software’s algorithm had trouble detecting children. Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving development subsidiary, will lay off almost a quarter of its workforce—about 900 employees—the company announced Thursday.

Cruise lays off nearly a quarter of its staff after grounding its robotaxi fleet

Long-term employees are being offered an additional two weeks’ pay per every year at Cruise over three years. Everyone will receive an end-of-the-year bonus, as well as extended medical and dental coverage, immigration support, and other benefits. Following the resignation of Vogt, Mo Elshenawy, the company’s VP for engineering, was promoted to president and chief technology officer. Cruise, the self-driving unit of General Motors, will lay off nearly a quarter of its employees, or 900 workers, after grounding its fleet in response to an incident in which a hit-and-run victim became pinned under a Cruise vehicle and then was dragged 20 feet to the side of the road. The autonomous vehicle company confirmed to Insider that some of its contract workers who were involved in the company's robotaxi operations had been laid off, but declined to provide a specific number or locations impacted.

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That has been pared back to relaunching its robotaxis in a single, yet-to-be-determined market. Also among the cuts, according to Bloomberg, was Prashanthi Raman, Cruise’s vice president of government affairs. Raman was featured in a promotional video last year where she rode around San Francisco in a Cruise robotaxi alongside former Mayor Willie Brown. General Motors, which announced it would be cutting spending on the self-driving car company by “hundreds of millions of dollars,” has been in the process of clearing out much of Cruise’s leadership. These positions spanned departments including software development, marketing, recruiting, accounting and operations. As part of their total compensation, Cruise employees would receive some cash salary and also would receive another portion as company stock.

And financial pressures have been mounting for start-ups that sell sensors and other technology to self-driving car companies. Further, a majority of collisions involving Waymo represented low-speed affairs initially stemming from other (human) drivers. As well, during incidents where a Waymo driverless car hit another vehicle, the counterparties were not blameless, leaving little ability for the Waymo car to avoid the collision. Contributing to the woes that eventually sparked the General Motors layoffs, Bloomberg reported in late October that Cruise grounded its entire fleet.

General Motors Layoffs 2023: What to Know About the Latest Cruise Job Cuts

We are ceasing work on the Origin MY24 but not losing sight of our work on future programs. This is very different from our prior plans to expand into more than a dozen new cities in 2024. Cruise told CNBC that the layoffs are reflective of its current supervised driving operations, adding that the company plans to resume driverless service but that it does not have a specific timeline to share. Cruise announced a round of layoffs Thursday affecting contract workers who worked on its driverless ridehailing service, CNBC has learned. The cuts included those who help with cleaning vehicles, fleet charging and fielding customer support inquiries. The once hard-charging autonomous vehicle company Cruise is facing an existential crisis, and is now scrambling to appease investors, regulators and the public — just weeks after the California DMV revoked its license to operate — according to audio of a Monday all-hands meeting obtained by Forbes.

GM’s Cruise cutting 24% of workforce, fires 9 execs amid robotaxi safety probe - Fox Business

GM’s Cruise cutting 24% of workforce, fires 9 execs amid robotaxi safety probe.

Posted: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

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Key leaders depart GM's Cruise, layoffs announced amid investigation into SF incident - CBS News

Key leaders depart GM's Cruise, layoffs announced amid investigation into SF incident.

Posted: Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In an interview in Washington, DC, yesterday, Barra said that fully driverless cars will scale faster than a lot of people think. It’s been a tumultuous seven years since GM first announced its plan to acquire Cruise with the goal of rapidly commercializing the technology. The company has scored some significant victories in recent months, including a vote in California to allow it to operate its driverless robotaxi service 24/7 — only to see most of that progress evaporate after a series of errors have exposed major problems with Cruise’s management. Those who were laid off will remain on payroll through February 12th and are eligible for an additional eight weeks of pay.

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Jon McNeill, who joined the Cruise board last month, has been appointed vice chairman of the board, serving alongside GM CEO Mary Barra. Cruise has said it will eventually relaunch its driverless ridehail operations in just one city. The company will also “prioritize” the Chevy Bolt platform it uses for its fleet, indicating that production of its Origin shuttle without steering wheel and pedals will remain indefinitely paused.

Cruise is targeting non-engineering jobs in the layoffs, particularly those people who worked in the field, commercial operations and corporate staffing, according to the email. The company has also ended additional assignments of contingent workers who supported its driverless operations. Engineering, a category that makes up the bulk of the Cruise workforce, is largely being preserved, according to the content of the email and discussions with internal sources.

We know you will want to say goodbye to your colleagues, so you will have access to Cruise email and Zoom for the next couple of hours (until 10am PT). Our message to other employers in the market is that each departing Cruiser is a talented, driven, and mission-focused team member who will contribute and achieve great things elsewhere. Other companies will be privileged to have these professionals on their teams, as we were privileged to have them here during their time at Cruise.

But it was a crash with an emergency response vehicle that began to chip away at the company’s seemingly impenetrable exterior. The layoffs follow a series of missteps in recent months that culminated in the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspending the company’s driverless vehicle permit. The California Public Utilities Commission pulled Cruise’s permit, which allowed it to charge for robotaxi rides, soon after. The agencies suspended Cruise’s permits after an October 2 incident, in which a pedestrian who was struck by a human driver and then landed in the adjacent lane, was then run over by a  Cruise robotaxi.

Regulators accused Cruise of omitting footage of its car dragging the woman from a video that it provided to state officials. The letter said they would stay on the payroll through 12 February and are eligible for another eight weeks of pay. Long-term employees will get another two weeks of pay for every year at the company over three years, the letter said. A Cruise representative also told CNBC that the company's goal is now to work on a fully driverless L4 service, as well as relaunching ride-hailing in one city to start. McNeill, who joined the Cruise board recently and was previously chief operating officer at Lyft and president of Tesla, now serves alongside GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra. "We are still working through what that means for the company and who's going to be affected by that and we don't have all the answers yet," Vogt said, according to Forbes.