The self-driving subsidiary of General Motors, Cruise, will be the first one to allow its employees to jump inside one of its own autonomous vehicles that operate in San Francisco without a human driver in the front seat.
Who Can Ride?
Apart from them, this opperchunity will also be provided to the certain members of the public who will also be able to ride without spending a single penny.
First Time Travelling In Driverless AV
Being the first one to ride the driverless AV, Cruise co-founder, CTO and president Kyle Vogt reportedly gushed about it all over Twitter.
He said, “Around 11pm Monday night we launched an AV without anyone inside for the first time,” tweeted Vogt.
Further adding, “Until now we’ve been testing with humans in the driver’s or passenger’s seat, so this was a first. It began to roam around the city, waiting for a ride request. At 11:20pm I used the Cruise app and summoned my first ride. After a few minutes, one of the Cruise AVs (named Sourdough) drove up to me and pulled over. Nobody was inside the car. I pressed the ‘start ride’ button and the AV smoothly pulled back into traffic.”
That night, Vogt requested five more rides as these rides had to be at night as per the stipulations of Cruise’s “driverless deployment permit” from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the company can only operate driverless between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m and at a max speed of 30 miles per hour.
Permit For Travel
Prior to this, during early October, Cruise received the permit.
This permit allows the company to deploy its vehicles without a human onboard, as well as charge fees for delivery services, but crucially not ride-hailing services.
Interestigly, Cruise’s first human-less deployment comes about a week after GM CEO Mary Barra said the company is confident that Cruise.
The company plans to begin commercial driverless ride-hailing and delivery operations by next year.
The company is yet to apply for the final permit it needs.
Till that time, only Cruise employees and non-paying members of the public will be riding around in Sourdough and other human-less AVs.
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