Lower than a day after certainly one of its driverless taxis collided with a hearth truck in a San Francisco intersection, Cruise agreed on Friday to a request from state regulators to chop in half the variety of autos it was working within the metropolis.
The setback for the driverless automotive firm got here only a week after the California Public Utilities Fee voted to permit the growth of driverless taxi companies from Cruise, which is owned by Normal Motors, and its rival Waymo, which is owned by the Google mother or father firm Alphabet.
On Friday, the California Division of Motor Automobiles, which regulates the security of the driverless vehicles, requested Cruise to half the variety of autos it was working in San Francisco. The Cruise car’s collision with a hearth truck the day earlier than had injured a passenger within the driverless automotive. Earlier within the week, one other Cruise car received caught in newly poured concrete on one other metropolis avenue.
Cruise didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The corporate, which now has 400 autos working in San Francisco, can have not more than 50 driverless vehicles operating in the course of the day and 150 at evening.
Final weekend, about 10 Cruise autos stopped functioning in the course of a busy avenue in San Francisco’s North Seashore neighborhood, blocking site visitors for quarter-hour. Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for Cruise, mentioned in a press release that the vehicles had problem connecting to the Cruise workers who might need guided them out of the way in which due to a spike in mobile site visitors brought on by a music pageant within the metropolis’s Golden Gate Park about 4 miles away.
A number of different Cruise autos additionally stalled in streets close to the park.
One week in the past, the C.P.U.C. allowed each corporations to cost for rides across the clock wherever in San Francisco. The C.P.U.C. and the D.M.V. are the 2 businesses governing autonomous autos in California. An organization has to acquire a allow from the D.M.V. earlier than it applies for driverless deployment permits — the sort that Cruise and Waymo acquired final week — from the utilities fee.
The motor autos authority mentioned in a press release that it’s “investigating current regarding incidents involving Cruise autos in San Francisco.” The company requested Cruise to chop the variety of autos working in San Francisco “till the investigation is full and Cruise takes acceptable corrective actions to enhance highway security.”
“The DMV reserves the appropriate, following investigation of the information, to droop or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there’s decided to be an unreasonable danger to public security,” the company mentioned in its assertion.
San Francisco officers have complained since January that autonomous autos have been interfering with emergency autos. Earlier than this week, officers documented 55 incidents the place a driverless automotive abruptly stopped or interfered with emergency autos, together with one occasion with firefighters who have been battling a home hearth.
On Wednesday, metropolis officers filed an injunction asking the C.P.U.C. to quickly halt the driverless taxi growth. Neither firm has detailed how they plan so as to add to their driverless taxi companies.