GM’s Cruise Anywhere is beta testing AV car share in San Francisco

Cruise—an AV company purchased by GM last year—is offering completely autonomous rides to its San Francisco based employees. Currently, the service is offered only to employees. The company has indicated “that some employees are already using it as their primary source of transportation, replacing either personal vehicle ownership, public transit or traditional ride-hailing services completely.” As it is currently operating the app and cares are is “having them use it for the first time and make AVs their primary form of transportation.” A Reuter’s poll from May points toward this same effect of Uber/Lyft already taking place (pre-AV). These findings are pointing toward real viability of a shared automobile future. The market for this exists, people are already accepting shared cars as a viable form of transportation–replace their own vehicles. Thus it is easy to see how with the advent of AVs this reality would be made more financially viable. Lyft and Uber are paying their drivers about 60% of the total fare you pay as a rider. And while a good portion of approximately 60% goes to the upkeep of the cars (maintenance and fuel), it is easy to see why Lyft/Uber are ready to get out of the driver game–reduce expenses, increase profits.

In the case of the Curise beta testing cars, they all do have safety drivers behind the wheel, in accordance with California law, for now. Yet Cruise has indicated that “those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions, with the vast majority of the driving done autonomously.” So right now, the beta of the Cruise Anywhere app and service are really just Uber/Lyft for the employees of the company—but it shows where things are going very quickly. Lyft plans on having V service in place this year—see an early post on Urbanism Next written by SCI Fellow Ramy Barhouche.

This video shows employees using the service: