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General Motorsis investing $ 850 million intoCruiseas the autonomous vehicle subsidiary slowly makes its way back to testing inPhoenix , Dallasand , as of Tuesday , Houston .
GM ’s CFO Paul Jacobson announce the Washington extract onstage at Deutsche Bank ’s Global Automotive Industry Conference on Tuesday .
“ This will help bridge over Cruise funding until we can see the right farseeing - term capital efficient scheme , include potential raw partnership and extraneous funding , ” Tiffany Testo , a spokesperson for the troupe , tell apart TechCrunch . She refuse to elaborate on the type of new partnership or how much money Cruise hopes to lift .
The Modern investment come less than a year after GM told investors it would slash spending on Cruise in 2024 by “ hundreds of millions ” of clam , following a series of safety incident that culminated inCruise grounding its entire fleetin November 2023 . Patrick Morrisey , VP of corporate communications at GM , told TechCrunch that the reduction in spending is still in effect , despite today ’s Washington infusion .
“ The total reducing in spending announced to begin with is based on the fact that Cruise ’s full operating cost are low in 2024 versus 2023 ( surgical process paused for several months , little fleet , fewer cities , etc . … ” Morrisey enunciate via e-mail , mark that Cruise still needs money to elevate its technology . Just not as much .
In aggregate , Cruise has already raised over $ 15 billion , per Crunchbase data . GM has spent , and lost , over $ 8 billion since acquiring Cruise in 2016 , with $ 3.48 billion lost in 2023 alone . But the tonic store paint a picture that GM is not yet quick to give up on its investment .
Cruise has struggled since commercializing its fully autonomous , driverless robotaxi serve in San Francisco and Austin . concisely after pull out the driver , incidents of vehicle bricking and block dealings , public transportation and first responders begin to surface on social medium . In October , a Cruise robotaxi flow over and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in San Francisco . The pedestrian had initially been murder by a human being - driven car and landed in the way of life of a Cruise robotaxi . Union and Department of State regulators accused Cruise employee of providing incomplete entropy in their reporting , showing picture only of the vehicle hard braking and not puff the footer as the car seek a slipover maneuver .
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When that extra data came to Inner Light , the California Department of Motor Vehiclesimmediately suspendedthe company ’s permit to work ego - labour vehicle on public roads , and those still have not been reinstated .
The DMV has confirmed to TechCrunch that Cruise is in talks to reestablish its permits in the state . In other DoS where AV company do n’t need to acquire permits , Cruise is already prepare a return .
Cruise has launch small fleets in Phoenix , Dallas and now Houston that will operate with a human rubber driver behind the wheel . The troupe aims to validate its technology and move slowly to win back public combine .
