Here comes driverless ride sharing: Cruise unveils the origin, a fully autonomous SUV designed for app-controlled urban transportation - [Spectral Lines

Abstract

I recently drove from Silicon Valley to San Francisco. It started raining on the way and I hadn't thought to take an umbrella. No matter-I had the locations of two parking garages, just a block or so from my destination, preloaded into my navigation app. But both were full, and I found myself circling in stop-and-go traffic around crowded, wet, hilly, construction-heavy San Francisco, hunting for street parking or an open garage for nearly an hour. It was driving hell. ¶ So when I finally arrived at a launch event hosted by Cruise, I couldn't have been more receptive to the company's pitch for the Cruise Origin, a new vehicle that, Cruise executives say, intends to make it so I won't need to drive or park in a city ever again.¶ The Cruise Origin is a six-passenger, autonomous, electric, SUV-size vehicle intended to disrupt not so much the car industry as urban transportation overall. Cruise (mostly owned by GM) does not plan to offer the Origin on the retail market. Instead, it will operate fleets of the vehicles as a ride-sharing service; screens inside are intended to give information about upcoming pickups and drop-offs. ¶ Uber, which launched the last big transportation disruption and has been preparing for the next by investing in its own autonomous vehicle research, might have some scrambling to do. ¶ Since the Origin won't be sold, the company isn't talking about pricing.¶ However, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann did talk a lot about what the designers did to make this autonomous vehicle as inexpensive as possible to manufacture-production costs will be about half of those required to make today's all-electric SUVs, he said. The designers started with a new, all-electric platform, made all the sensor and computer systems modular for easy replacement and upgrading, and took out everything driver-related, including rearview mirrors, windshield wipers, and, of course, the steering wheel.