Look for neither the steering wheel nor the pedals: this autonomous shuttle, the latest born at the start of General Motors (GM), Cruise, does not have one. This vehicle is "our answer to the question of which transport system would you want to build if you could start from scratch," said Dan Ammann, CEO of the start-up, unveiling the Cruise Origin electric vehicle on the evening of this Tuesday.
The vehicle is named “Cruise Origin” and was developed with Honda Motor Co Ltd, which took a minority stake in Cruise in 2018 in an effort to catch up with rivals in developing a technology with enormous costs and risk and no market-ready products pic .twitter.com / 3AF8bTekJY
- JPR007 (@ jpr007) January 22, 2020"We removed the engine. We have removed the driver, who is most often tired, distracted, edgy and in a hurry. We removed the equipment that was there to assist the driver, including the steering wheel, pedals, mirrors, windshield wipers and narrow seats, ”he continued. The start-up explained that the Origin is intended to be a production vehicle, designed for shared transport.
No autonomous vehicle before 2028?
This announcement was made without "any details on its scope, launch date or even its cost (have been) given, which leaves observers more questions than answers," noted analyst Richard Windsor, on the Radio Free Mobile blog. According to him, no major development in autonomous vehicles will take place before 2028.
He "suspects GM Cruise of being under pressure to show something and, while the technology is far from being commercialized, an exhibition car is all they have to present to us". "Therefore, I don't think it advances GM Cruise's schedule in the market and I see no reason to revise my estimate for autonomous driving to become a commercial reality," he added.
Acquisition in 2016
GM bought the Californian start-up Cruise in 2016 during the race for an autonomous car between the car manufacturers. Driverless, it is supposed to make it possible to reshape urban spaces for these shared vehicles.
To date, autonomous vehicles have not passed the traffic stage in tight spaces, most often for test periods. In most of them, a driver can regain control in an emergency. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is among the most advanced with Waymo.
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