Take a closer look at the Cruise Origin — a fully self-driving vehicle manufactured by GM that doesn't have a steering wheel and would never need a human operator
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Cruise took over some space in downtown San Francisco to showcase ...
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... its Cruise Origin vehicle. The Origin is the fifth-generation Cruise ... er? It has no steering wheel, no pedals, and no need for a driver.
Cruise
Cruise was acquired by GM in 2016 and in three years has made remarkable progress. The startup, now valued at close to $20 billion, brought the previous four versions of its self-driving car.
Matthew DeBord/BI
Each is based on an all-electric Chevy Bolt. Here's Gen 4 — named "Karl."
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Former GM president Dan Ammann is now CEO of Cruise. He presided over the Origin's reveal.
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Cofounder and CTO Kyle Vogt provided a walkaround, presented the Origin's tech, and gave a guided tour of the vehicle's interior. He also noted that the sliding doors are a potential boon for cyclists and pedestrians.
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And quite the interior it is! Wired's Alex Davies (a former BI transportation editor) and I checked out the roomy-roomy-roominess, which reminded me of London black cabs and the old Checkers in New York.
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There's a pair of bench seats that face each other. Seating is for six.
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Dual screens provide an information interface. The Origin is built on a new electric platform, jointly developed by GM and Honda.
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There's cargo space at the rear. And two of the four main sensor arrays. The vehicle has been designed to operate around the clock and last for a million miles.
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The sensors are quite high-tech, enabling the Origin to approach what Vogt called "superhuman" performance.
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The digital display can identify the Origin's fleet number.
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Sensors enable the Origin to "see" in near total darkness.
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Currently, Cruise is testing vehicles in the dense, urban environment of San Francisco. Vogt characterized it as entropic and random — good things if you're teaching self-driving cars to drive.
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Cruise has grown A LOT since the GM acquisition.
Matthew DeBord/BI
Ammann took questions from the media. He said that using Cruise's ride-sharing service could save a typical San Franciscan $5,000 a year.
Matthew DeBord/BI
I wandered around the space. Cruise and Ammann have taken the position that the traditional car is finished.
Matthew DeBord/BI
And the signage at the event made that clear.
Matthew DeBord/BI
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Matthew is a Business Insider senior correspondent who covers transportation (and chess, guitars, home-audio equipment, cocktails, and sometimes classic rock). His focus is the global auto industry, including Tesla, a company he has chronicled since 2007. He also looks after Business Insider's annual Car of the Year award, announced every fall.He's written for The New York Times, Slate, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, and CBS Interactive. He's commented on the auto industry for a variety of media outlets, including Sirius XM, MSNBC, Radio France, KPCC, and KCRW. DeBord won the 2018 Ken Purdy Award from the International Motor Press Association.He's taught at New York University's Stern School of Business and the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.His book "Return to Glory: The Story of Ford's Revival and Victory at the Toughest Race in the World" was published in 2017 by Atlantic Monthly Press and came out in paperback in June 2018. In the New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Kellerman called it a "page-turning synthesis of business book and adventure saga."
