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Cruise slashes 24% of self-driving car workforce in sweeping layoffs

130 points by plasticchris 3y ago

ceejayoz 3y ago
Including, for once, "key leaders". https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/gms-cruise-dismisses-nine-key-leaders-amid-safety-probe.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/gms-cruise-dismisses-nine-ke... > The departures include leaders from Cruise’s legal, government affairs, commercial operations and safety and systems teams, according to the company-wide message, which GM and Cruise spokespeople confirmed was authentic.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  That’s because GM is a serious company, unlike a lot of SV
hiddencost 3y ago
This whole saga has been really vindicating for Waymo's theory of slow-and-steady. Uber and Cruise both tried to cut corners and mistakes caused their operations massive set backs. Tesla's efforts have killed the most people, but seem relatively resilient.
- ericmay 3y ago
  I'm not so sure. Slow and steady in this case might just be a failure to fail fast. The future isn't in cars or autonomous cars, it's in sidewalks, trains, bike lanes, and other forms of transit. The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    I hear a lot of people saying "the future isn't X" when they really mean "I wish the future wasn't X". The future absent radical change of cultural heart clearly is personal EVs. You don't have to like it, but it's the direction 99% of countries are moving and clearly normal people do want it.
    - mupuff1234 3y ago
      > 99% of countries A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters.
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
        > A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters. That is due to lack of money not lack of desire. If you asked the moped/scooter riders if they would rather have a car, they would choose a car. As countries become more developed and wealthier, more people will be able to afford cars and car use will increase.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Scooters are probably the most rapidly electrifying class of personal vehicle.
        mupuff1234 3y ago
        Yes, but the comment I was replying to was referring to car EVs, not scooters.
    - webdood90 3y ago
      people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience. better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.
      - standardUser 3y ago
        > cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    You’re not gonna retrofit Atlanta and Dallas to be commuter friendly anytime soon. Self driving cars are gonna be a thing given what Waymos been able to achieve in SF and Phoenix already.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      I won't go as far as to say Atlanta is commuter friendly, but the past decade has seen lots of improvements in greenway construction, the expansion of the beltline, connecting different parts of the city. I hope it keeps going that directions because that is where I am looking to end up eventually. I used to cycle down Peachtree Street from Buckhead to Piedmont Park...it was a harrowing experience.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      I'm not sure we need to retrofit Atlanta or Dallas, or what you might envision here. You could for example maintain existing infrastructure without spending a lot of taxpayer money on new highways and instead allocate funding to improving density, adjusting zoning, eliminating surface parking lots, and literally just paving sidewalks and bike lanes. Busses can run on existing highways and throughout cities. City streets can already accommodate trams and bike lanes. I agree that self-driving cars are "going to be a thing" but their proliferation I doubt. They're not really a category change from Uber, it's just "more efficient" as an additive solution, but we need subtractive solutions. You can think of the car and self-driving cars in particular in the same way you can think of personal digital cameras, alarm clocks, and smiliar devices before the advent of the iPhone. The iPhone (and other smart phones) was a subtractive product and eliminated the need for those devices. Similarly a sidewalk and building well (among other things) eliminate much of the need for a personal car and so Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, etc. can't effectively compete because they don't build sidewalks or have anything to do with this category of transit. If I can just walk over to the grocery store like I could in London or Osaka then no amount of self-driving will matter.
      - NegativeLatency 3y ago
        Self driving cars also won’t really fix traffic, because people will send the car home (doubling the number of trips)
  - mym1990 3y ago
    As much as I would love to believe in that future, it is a pipe dream in America at least. So little of the infrastructure I see going up is around any of those other forms of travel. Building sidewalks and bike lanes is not a sexy propositions for capital to come through...the money is in building 4 lane highways and spending billions on autonomous car research. All that to say I hope I am wrong in the biggest way possible.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      All the new suburbs around me are building sidewalks and bike paths. That is a big improvement. Now if we can just get people to use them for something other than a Saturday bar hopping bike ride.
      - mym1990 3y ago
        Yeah, its kind of a chicken and the egg problem: more foot traffic can incentivize better infrastructure, and better infrastructure can incentivize more foot traffic. But which one should come first? Is the "build it and they will come" mindset right for all locales? (Questions are somewhat rhetorical). Plenty of ambitious projects get completed and fall on their face.
  - nytesky 3y ago
    I was a huge proponent of urban planning and smart growth, loved trains. But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter. For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs. Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily. It’s a sad state of affairs. Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…
    - ericmay 3y ago
      I hate driving down the highway and people speeding past me and weaving in and out of traffic without a license plate. I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area. Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go. The highways and roads are really really loud. Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all. Etc. It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit. Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure. Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.
      - naremu 3y ago
        I have a feeling that if people made one of those pros and cons sheets and did the crossing off equal things, these conversations would go easier I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways
  - srackey 3y ago
    Lmao no it’s not Have you seen the sidewalks and trains in American cities? Lol Maybe if our streets and subways looked like Tokyo I’d agree with you, but getting to that point is a coup-complete problem
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Don't mistake what today looks like for what tomorrow could look like. Take a look at Amsterdam in the 1970s. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-show-how-amsterdam-turned-itself-into-a-bike-riders-paradise https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
      - taylodl 3y ago
        Wow! I did not know that! Thank you for sharing!
  - minwcnt5 3y ago
    You're just dreaming. I hate cars, but they aren't going anywhere. Even cities in China that have some of the most convenient and modern public transit in the world are still full of cars. Even if the world cuts car and truck usage in half, which will take multiple generations, autonomous vehicles will still be enormously impactful.
  - dageshi 3y ago
    Were autonomous cars available I'm certain people would prefer them over all of the above by a large margin.
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    I'm a car convert, and I'm someone who generally hates driving, and used only public transport for decades. It's just no match. PT is only more effective in theory. Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country. I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.
    - lagolinguini 3y ago
      > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?
      - buzzert 3y ago
        I can't recall a strike ever preventing me from getting to work in my car?
    - eschneider 3y ago
      Uh...highways and roads don't build themselves. The planning and costs are huge.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there. This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    Even when a huge amount of people live in suburbs and even farther out? I have no interest living in a city and the older I get the more and more I want to move away from things.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    This is such a ridiculous thing to say. Cars are so immensely useful because I can go to exactly where I want to when I want to. I can transport people and things easily. How do I take a train or a bike 80 miles away to go hiking, boating (imagine carrying a boat or a canoe onto a train!), golfing, etc? Or the other way to the beach? Or to drop kids off at different places with a variety of things they have with them? I would seriously limit my freedom of movement and ability to do things. There's a tendency here for a I assume young person who lives in a city and doesn't have a family or hobbies that require going to far away places with things, etc.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      Can you elaborate on why if we build more infrastructure, create more bike lanes or sidewalks, create street cars in downtown areas and such, you wouldn't be able to drive your car 80 miles away to go hiking or boating or golfing or go to the beach?
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        Well, I interpreted this: > The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place. As saying you don't see any need for cars at all. That the future is these other things. I'm just saying that cars are extremely useful and that if I had to choose between having a car or all the other things then I'd pick a car. I enjoy the other things too and am grateful to have a train nearby I can take into the city. But I can't imagine life without a car.
        ericmay 3y ago
        Oh ok. I also have a car, and a garage, and have no plans on not having those. It's convenient and allows for flexibility. I'm not advocating for banning cars or something. But we also do not have to make an either-or choice. The answer is we can have both! But today we need to do two things: 1. Not building car-only infrastructure. I.e. build sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, and trams/street cars. While I can afford a car, many can't or struggle to, or even if they can it is a poor financial choice. By giving people additional options we can increase entrepreneurship, reduce barriers to things like physically getting to a job, etc. 2. Reducing the need to use a car for things like buying a loaf of bread, short trips, going out to a restaurant, heading to a local sporting event, etc. There's no world in which you will forever be able to drive a large truck or SUV 15 miles to a grocery store to buy a few trivial items. We can do that now because we hit an energy jackpot with fossil fuels (which are necessary and useful), but economic physics dictate that this can't last. So instead of driving to do common tasks, you can instead just walk (exercise is good for you) and then walk back. If it's raining, umbrella. Etc. There are a lot of additional benefits here like obesity reduction which will save us money. Today what we have is incredibly expensive infrastructure and transportation. We don't need to. We need more options.
  - xnx 3y ago
    Self-driving electric vehicles are the future of public transportation: safer, faster, cheaper, and less environmental impact than trains. Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles.
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      > Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles. How about no cars at all (or significantly fewer cars)? Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists.
      - xnx 3y ago
        > Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists. Buses are terrible to bike around: obstruct visibility, hard to pass, block traffic when they stop, and are louder and more polluting than electric cars. Trains don't yield to pedestrians and only serve a very limited number of locations.
  - danaris 3y ago
    I mean, I certainly hope that the future is those things in places where they're practical. There are many places where they just aren't practical—where sidewalks are useless, because the nearest thing to walk or bike to is miles away, the weather gets too inhospitable to walk or bike safely for much of the year, and the places people want to go are just too spread out for trains to be at all viable. For those of us who choose not to live in dense urban areas, I would dearly love to see full self-driving cars someday...but given the challenges we've observed in the last few years, I'm now skeptical as to whether we'll realistically see them arrive.
- nytesky 3y ago
  I suspect that is more a function of Googles deep pockets. The other players are putting major eggs in self driving, for Google it’s a hobby.
  - ra7 3y ago
    Who else has put more eggs in self driving than Waymo/Google? They have a fully autonomous service running in two cities running 24/7, with two more announced. 700,000+ trips in 2023 so far. They’ve spent tens of billions over the years on R&D, custom sensors and vehicles. That doesn’t sound like a hobby to me.
  - pb7 3y ago
    Google is pretty damn good at hobbies then. What is everyone else doing for whom this isn't a hobby? Pretty sad that someone's side hustle is doing better than your "major eggs", no? Waymo pioneered self driving and has been quietly in the lead since. Companies like Tesla and Cruise are all smoke, no fire riding on Waymo's coattails in public perception.
    - nytesky 3y ago
      Autonomous driving is not a core business for Google at this point: almost all profits come from ads, some good chunk of revenues from GSuite and cloud, but autonomous driving is orthogonal to the rest of their business. They have achieved great things, and kept a steady pace, but my point was there is no urgency to "deliver" -- it doesn't really reflect in any way on core business, is not necessary for their survival, but is a moonshot that could really pay off. For Tesla and Cruise, it is much more existential that they are not left behind in self driving.
      - pb7 3y ago
        Waymo is not under Google. It is an independent company under Alphabet, unlike something like Cloud or YouTube for example which are under Google. It has the same leadership but the company is very separate. For Waymo, it is an existential crisis to fail at self driving because Google ad money is not funding Waymo.
- kotaKat 3y ago
  And Cruise went hard with their GM-backed power to lobby to bend rules for them harder and faster than Waymo could. Remember the Firefly? Totally unacceptable to have a low-speed vehicle with no controls. But Cruise? Sure, fuck it, why not have a giant EV Bolt with no controls? Or a giant box-on-wheels?
- ra7 3y ago
  Tesla has been kept alive only because they are scared to even let drivers take their hands off the wheel. They have very low confidence in the system to allow for driver inattention, let alone completely remove the driver. Numerous software “rewrites” over the years with many buzzwords attached, and they still haven’t clocked a single driverless mile. They also have a huge fan base (investors) who are happy to babysit FSD in order to provide more “training data” and they’ve rationalized themselves whatever little benefit it offers is worthy of the product name.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Tesla cannot abandon FSD, if they did Musk, and by extension (and due to all kinds of financial connetctions and dependencies) all his other companies would be in very serious trouble.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Not at all, Tesla has enough cash on hand to pay everyone out a few billion if there was a judgement wrt FSD. They outran the liability with the brand and sales.
      - te_chris 3y ago
        The comment you're replying to is not talking about court-enforced liabilities. If the pull out of FSD they're basically Mercedes with a 5 year lead on manufacturing. That is categorically not a trillion dollar company and the house of cards leveraged against Tesla stock crumbles.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Nah, there is still enough collective delusion in the brand to keep the stock somewhat propped up vs legacy auto’s slow death. BYD and Tesla are crushing it comparatively and have the supply chain to keep ramping. No one else is selling meaningful volume at this time. Mercedes is certainly not the future in any meaningful way.
- ttcbj 3y ago
  Yes, but its not really clear to me how to interpret these layoffs. 1. I could understand firing a few top executives, but is laying off a quarter of the staff likely to make the cars safer? Shouldn't they be adding people focused on safety if they intend to continue to pursue it? 2. Far more people each day die in GM's not-self-driving vehicles. Why are they not firing people over that? I guess the generous perspective is that maybe they are trying to change an internal culture? Or maybe reduce their cost base so they have a longer runway in which to emphasize safety? But a concerning perspective, for me, is that they are irrationally prioritizing the negative publicity associated with a single rare/newsworthy incident over the unpublicized/not-newsworthy daily drumbeat of human-caused auto deaths. And that doesn't seem to be good for safety in the long term.
  - nyxtom 3y ago
    Large majority of layoffs were non-engineering and specifically targeted in such a way that we can refocus on standardization and benchmarking profiles for a single city re-launch while cutting and revisiting programs wholesale such as commercial operations (which is on hold for some time). We don't have infinite money and need to build standards that can benefit the whole community/industry/regulations. Despite what many are saying - this is being done calculated and methodical.
    - InCityDreams 3y ago
      >..we can refocus on standardization and benchmarking profiles for a single city re-launch while cutting and revisiting programs wholesale. Should there be a comma after 'standardisation'. Maybe after 'launch', too?
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      How does Cruise focus on standardization by laying off the people who were writing them? Surely you've interacted with the sensors teams, or the kernel teams, or the silicon teams, or the hardware teams, or syseng, or any of the other engineering teams that saw significant cuts?
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Doing nothing kills the most people. Progress is always fatal.
- superduperer 3y ago
  [dead]
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  That's funny since people used to say that cruise AND waymo were taking it slow and steady. The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. Though as bad as it is (or isn't, I'm not super informed on the very latest version of FSD), it seems like Tesla has improved a lot recently. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's good at all, just that it was pretty bad when they started the beta. So I'm not sure which approach will end up winning. As weird as it sounds, going about it so slowly just makes you a lot more vulnerable when stuff goes wrong like with the Cruise car accident. Tesla on the other hand is a car manufacturer, so they won't really ever "quit" unless they shut down.
  - okdood64 3y ago
    > The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. That's the only heuristic that matters for the public and lawmakers. Like it or not.
  - minwcnt5 3y ago
    > The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. That and they do higher speed roads, offer service during the daytime, service the airport (in Phoenix), use more direct routes, handle more complex maneuvers, have driven a lot more miles and served more trips, and so forth and so on.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Of course Tesla has killed the most people they have literally millions of cars with this functionality on the road, comparing that is kind of silly. That said I have not actually hear of any major or fatal accidents on FSD. They have also saved a lot of people by adding advanced detection that most cars on the road simply don't have. So a comparison like that really just doesn't make much sense. Comparing Tesla Autopilot to other quasi-Autopilots makes more sense. The real difference is that Tesla sells cars, makes money and can use this as a feature in their cars. For basic autopilot of course, but also for other things. So its worth doing for them even if they don't reach Level 5. They have not stacked their financial viability on that. Arguably they have stacked part of their credibility on that, but they have lost most of that. Waymo and Cruise basically don't have a relevant product and wont have one for quite a while.
pb7 3y ago
What a massive shakeup from the CEO, through other executives, down to the rank and file. Notably engineering is not affected. Waymo is looking more and more reliable.
oldpersonintx 3y ago
former Cruiser here...its DEAD just kill it already by far the most toxic place I have ever worked, I look forward to dancing on its grave
- outside415 3y ago
  I also worked in AV for a time. It was like uber bro culture personofied and I didn't even work at uber. for some reason AV just draws out the worst kind of assholes. most of my co workers were from cruise and waymo. their arrogance and awfulness towards other humans was terrible.
nyxtom 3y ago
Our CTO is leading very well through one of the roughest times in our company's history. Despite what many are saying about Cruise right now - it's not down for the count.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  GM needs billions to pay for its union contract, that money will come out of Cruise's corpse
  - mehlmao 3y ago
    Maybe they shouldn't have spent $7 billion on stock buybacks?
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  What would down for the count look like to you? It seems pretty shaken up from an outsider's perspective. Losing a quarter of the workforce, most of the executive suite, and getting banned from the streets of California seem like difficult challenges to overcome.
  - nyxtom 3y ago
    If we saw a wholesale exit of our MLI platform teams I would be concerned. But many here are waiting to see where our CTO is going to lead. Eng was spread very thin attempting to commercialize. CTO's approach appears to be much more methodical so it's sort of a - let's give him a chance
  - ActionHank 3y ago
    Considering the number of top performers who leave companies when they see layoffs happening I would say they have likely lost more than a quarter.
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      They straight up fired some of their best staff+ engineers today. Does that count as losing them?
gorbachev 3y ago
Did the CEO take full responsibility?
- jedberg 3y ago
  Yes. He resigned.
cush 3y ago
I want to be open-minded about AI, but I’ll be damned if my tax dollars are going to a self-driving car’s unemployment cheque!
- orwin 3y ago
  How does it work in the US? Here it's a mandatory insurance you pay on your salary, but then if you're laid off without cause, you get 80% of your salary for X amount of time (sometime the company give the missing 20% for like 2 months, but i'm not sure if it's standard).
  - khuey 3y ago
    Companies pay an unemployment insurance payroll tax that goes into a big fund managed by the state and benefits are paid out of that fund. The exact amounts and timing vary a lot from state to state. These state funds are backstopped by the federal government who will lend the states money against future unemployment insurance tax revenue.
  - cush 3y ago
    No idea. I was making a joke about the headline which reads to me like the cars were laid off
ModernMech 3y ago
Hm, this would probably be me today if I had been offered a position there. Weeks before Christmas! Those guys were pretty cool but from the very beginning I always felt Cruise was built to be acquired. That seemed to be the whole plan: build a dream team, redo what we did in the DARPA challenges except more impressive, get bought by some big company… profit. It all worked out but there was never a plan after that it seems, because the darpa approach was never going to solve autonomous driving, even with a mega corp backing R&D.
joshuawright11 3y ago
Since the CEO / founders have already "resigned", this feels like GM is moving towards winding down the company or at the very least strongly re-thinking their commitment to backing this long term. Getting to FSD is probably moving a lot slower than they hoped and it's looking more and more like it will be another decade (or multiple) until a self driving company can turn a dime of profit. GM doesn't strike me as a particularly innovative company so the idea of a decades long moonshot probably isn't very appealing to them. The dragging / lying to regulators incident was bad but axing the founders / CEO seems like it would have been enough if GM were excited about the company long term.
- pavon 3y ago
  I disagree. The cuts are focused on commercial operations roles, not engineering. I see this as a sign that the adults have entered the room, and realized more work is needed to get the technology ready for commercial use rather than trying to prematurely skip to the end to keep up appearances with Waymo.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    The press release says the cuts were focused on operations, but that doesn't mean engineering was unaffected. Even the functional safety related teams were affected.
DonHopkins 3y ago
Well on their way to having a self-driving company!
babl-yc 3y ago
Blog post from Cruise leadership discussing the layoffs https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/cruise-team-updates/ https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/cruise-team-updates/ Most of the layoffs are within the operations side that assumed broader immediate rollout, and engineering is "largely not impacted."
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HumblyTossed 3y ago
So does this mean they just parked 24% of their self-driving cars?
bigtex 3y ago
So is Tesla the last OG company still claiming that Level 5 cars are around the corner?

130 points by plasticchris 3y ago

Including, for once, "key leaders". https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/gms-cruise-dismisses-nine-key-leaders-amid-safety-probe.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/gms-cruise-dismisses-nine-ke... > The departures include leaders from Cruise’s legal, government affairs, commercial operations and safety and systems teams, according to the company-wide message, which GM and Cruise spokespeople confirmed was authentic.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
That’s because GM is a serious company, unlike a lot of SV

hiddencost 3y ago

This whole saga has been really vindicating for Waymo's theory of slow-and-steady. Uber and Cruise both tried to cut corners and mistakes caused their operations massive set backs. Tesla's efforts have killed the most people, but seem relatively resilient.

ericmay 3y ago
I'm not so sure. Slow and steady in this case might just be a failure to fail fast. The future isn't in cars or autonomous cars, it's in sidewalks, trains, bike lanes, and other forms of transit. The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place.
- justrealist 3y ago
  I hear a lot of people saying "the future isn't X" when they really mean "I wish the future wasn't X". The future absent radical change of cultural heart clearly is personal EVs. You don't have to like it, but it's the direction 99% of countries are moving and clearly normal people do want it.
  - mupuff1234 3y ago
    > 99% of countries A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      > A large percentage of the world's population commutes on mopeds/scooters. That is due to lack of money not lack of desire. If you asked the moped/scooter riders if they would rather have a car, they would choose a car. As countries become more developed and wealthier, more people will be able to afford cars and car use will increase.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Scooters are probably the most rapidly electrifying class of personal vehicle.
      - mupuff1234 3y ago
        Yes, but the comment I was replying to was referring to car EVs, not scooters.
  - webdood90 3y ago
    people _think_ it's what they want because it's all they know. cities should be pushing for alternatives because they're better in literally every possible way, except convenience. better for our safety, for our health, for the environment, for less noise, for the cost, for a sense of community, for the saved space, and so on.
    - standardUser 3y ago
      > cities should be pushing for alternatives Most are, but a massive number of Americans live in sprawling suburbs and small-to-medium sized towns, not cities. Most of those places are ill-suited (to the extreme) for mass transit and other non-car options - yet they are perfectly designed to handle cars.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  You’re not gonna retrofit Atlanta and Dallas to be commuter friendly anytime soon. Self driving cars are gonna be a thing given what Waymos been able to achieve in SF and Phoenix already.
  - mym1990 3y ago
    I won't go as far as to say Atlanta is commuter friendly, but the past decade has seen lots of improvements in greenway construction, the expansion of the beltline, connecting different parts of the city. I hope it keeps going that directions because that is where I am looking to end up eventually. I used to cycle down Peachtree Street from Buckhead to Piedmont Park...it was a harrowing experience.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    I'm not sure we need to retrofit Atlanta or Dallas, or what you might envision here. You could for example maintain existing infrastructure without spending a lot of taxpayer money on new highways and instead allocate funding to improving density, adjusting zoning, eliminating surface parking lots, and literally just paving sidewalks and bike lanes. Busses can run on existing highways and throughout cities. City streets can already accommodate trams and bike lanes. I agree that self-driving cars are "going to be a thing" but their proliferation I doubt. They're not really a category change from Uber, it's just "more efficient" as an additive solution, but we need subtractive solutions. You can think of the car and self-driving cars in particular in the same way you can think of personal digital cameras, alarm clocks, and smiliar devices before the advent of the iPhone. The iPhone (and other smart phones) was a subtractive product and eliminated the need for those devices. Similarly a sidewalk and building well (among other things) eliminate much of the need for a personal car and so Ford, GM, Toyota, Tesla, etc. can't effectively compete because they don't build sidewalks or have anything to do with this category of transit. If I can just walk over to the grocery store like I could in London or Osaka then no amount of self-driving will matter.
    - NegativeLatency 3y ago
      Self driving cars also won’t really fix traffic, because people will send the car home (doubling the number of trips)
- mym1990 3y ago
  As much as I would love to believe in that future, it is a pipe dream in America at least. So little of the infrastructure I see going up is around any of those other forms of travel. Building sidewalks and bike lanes is not a sexy propositions for capital to come through...the money is in building 4 lane highways and spending billions on autonomous car research. All that to say I hope I am wrong in the biggest way possible.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    All the new suburbs around me are building sidewalks and bike paths. That is a big improvement. Now if we can just get people to use them for something other than a Saturday bar hopping bike ride.
    - mym1990 3y ago
      Yeah, its kind of a chicken and the egg problem: more foot traffic can incentivize better infrastructure, and better infrastructure can incentivize more foot traffic. But which one should come first? Is the "build it and they will come" mindset right for all locales? (Questions are somewhat rhetorical). Plenty of ambitious projects get completed and fall on their face.
- nytesky 3y ago
  I was a huge proponent of urban planning and smart growth, loved trains. But I feel the pandemic has upended any momentum for public transit for a generation. Less frequent commmutes make long drives more tolerable and parking more affordable and available, and transit now seems like a disease vector as well as rolling homeless shelter. For me personally, I hate the smell of weed and it is EVERY where in many downtown areas and transit hubs. Bikes? So weather dependent, little cargo space, hard to secure, and no way to carry a family readily. It’s a sad state of affairs. Autonomous cars will be a travesty as everyone starts sending them on non stop errands or run double commutes to save on parking…
  - ericmay 3y ago
    I hate driving down the highway and people speeding past me and weaving in and out of traffic without a license plate. I can't stand cars driving into buildings and businesses in my downtown area. Whenever it snows it seems like there's a huge multi-car pileup on the highway causing a complete stop and I can't get to where I was trying to go. The highways and roads are really really loud. Someone drove into my family in their truck and killed us all. Etc. It's not fair to point out the problems with bikes like you are, like the smell of weed (what about drunk drivers??) without also at least acknowledging the gigantic list of problems associated with car-only transit. Admittedly some of the problems you mention like a rolling homeless shelter or the smell of weed share a solution which is more, and better policing and as a society us having higher standards for ourselves and others, but they are problems that can be solved much more easily in my opinion than the problems associated with car-only infrastructure. Also I do want to point out that the disease vector comment seems really weird to me. Like the population density at Costco is a lot less than a train ride therefore you won't get sick as often? I don't get it.
    - naremu 3y ago
      I have a feeling that if people made one of those pros and cons sheets and did the crossing off equal things, these conversations would go easier I can't imagine equating things like the smell of weed and having to share a train with a homeless person, with death, death, accident clean up, new barriers added, and then more death anyways
- srackey 3y ago
  Lmao no it’s not Have you seen the sidewalks and trains in American cities? Lol Maybe if our streets and subways looked like Tokyo I’d agree with you, but getting to that point is a coup-complete problem
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Don't mistake what today looks like for what tomorrow could look like. Take a look at Amsterdam in the 1970s. https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-show-how-amsterdam-turned-itself-into-a-bike-riders-paradise https://www.fastcompany.com/3052699/these-historical-photos-...
    - taylodl 3y ago
      Wow! I did not know that! Thank you for sharing!
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  You're just dreaming. I hate cars, but they aren't going anywhere. Even cities in China that have some of the most convenient and modern public transit in the world are still full of cars. Even if the world cuts car and truck usage in half, which will take multiple generations, autonomous vehicles will still be enormously impactful.
- dageshi 3y ago
  Were autonomous cars available I'm certain people would prefer them over all of the above by a large margin.
- poisonborz 3y ago
  I'm a car convert, and I'm someone who generally hates driving, and used only public transport for decades. It's just no match. PT is only more effective in theory. Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. State actors, maybe society, is just plain bad at organising this. Maintaining and switching cars is easy, maintaining public infra, keeping timetables (!!!), organising upgrades and extensions, keeping workforce happy and not striking is the same as above. And I live in a fat rich western country. I get that cars don't scale, and ok, downtown of 1m+ cities should be park & ride. But maybe we should just spread out our living area more, and outside of megapolises just admit defeat and improve car infra.
  - lagolinguini 3y ago
    > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. As opposed to building highways, parking lots, massive car sized neighbourhoods etc...?
    - buzzert 3y ago
      I can't recall a strike ever preventing me from getting to work in my car?
  - eschneider 3y ago
    Uh...highways and roads don't build themselves. The planning and costs are huge.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > Car infra takes next to nothing to plan and build. Trains, trams, metro, anything big at all really, takes decades, riddled with corruption, environment destruction, landscape change. Car infrastructure is the same, you just haven’t seen it, and those are often related: most “pedestrian” or “bike” projects end up being about car management and almost all of the cost is usually spent there. This has ripple effects: for example, Boston’s rail service is underfunded in large part because of the massive debt taken on to build the Big Dig. That was promised to reduce commuting times for suburbanites substantially but within a couple years of opening, they were worse than before due to the extra trips incentivized.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  Even when a huge amount of people live in suburbs and even farther out? I have no interest living in a city and the older I get the more and more I want to move away from things.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  This is such a ridiculous thing to say. Cars are so immensely useful because I can go to exactly where I want to when I want to. I can transport people and things easily. How do I take a train or a bike 80 miles away to go hiking, boating (imagine carrying a boat or a canoe onto a train!), golfing, etc? Or the other way to the beach? Or to drop kids off at different places with a variety of things they have with them? I would seriously limit my freedom of movement and ability to do things. There's a tendency here for a I assume young person who lives in a city and doesn't have a family or hobbies that require going to far away places with things, etc.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Can you elaborate on why if we build more infrastructure, create more bike lanes or sidewalks, create street cars in downtown areas and such, you wouldn't be able to drive your car 80 miles away to go hiking or boating or golfing or go to the beach?
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      Well, I interpreted this: > The best ride in a car isn't one in which I'm driving or not driving, it's one in which I don't get in the car in the first place. As saying you don't see any need for cars at all. That the future is these other things. I'm just saying that cars are extremely useful and that if I had to choose between having a car or all the other things then I'd pick a car. I enjoy the other things too and am grateful to have a train nearby I can take into the city. But I can't imagine life without a car.
      - ericmay 3y ago
        Oh ok. I also have a car, and a garage, and have no plans on not having those. It's convenient and allows for flexibility. I'm not advocating for banning cars or something. But we also do not have to make an either-or choice. The answer is we can have both! But today we need to do two things: 1. Not building car-only infrastructure. I.e. build sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, and trams/street cars. While I can afford a car, many can't or struggle to, or even if they can it is a poor financial choice. By giving people additional options we can increase entrepreneurship, reduce barriers to things like physically getting to a job, etc. 2. Reducing the need to use a car for things like buying a loaf of bread, short trips, going out to a restaurant, heading to a local sporting event, etc. There's no world in which you will forever be able to drive a large truck or SUV 15 miles to a grocery store to buy a few trivial items. We can do that now because we hit an energy jackpot with fossil fuels (which are necessary and useful), but economic physics dictate that this can't last. So instead of driving to do common tasks, you can instead just walk (exercise is good for you) and then walk back. If it's raining, umbrella. Etc. There are a lot of additional benefits here like obesity reduction which will save us money. Today what we have is incredibly expensive infrastructure and transportation. We don't need to. We need more options.
- xnx 3y ago
  Self-driving electric vehicles are the future of public transportation: safer, faster, cheaper, and less environmental impact than trains. Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles.
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > Additionally, nothing is better for pedestrians and cyclists of the future than self-driving electric vehicles. How about no cars at all (or significantly fewer cars)? Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists.
    - xnx 3y ago
      > Adoption of mass transportation like trams, trains and buses is better for pedestrians and cyclists. Buses are terrible to bike around: obstruct visibility, hard to pass, block traffic when they stop, and are louder and more polluting than electric cars. Trains don't yield to pedestrians and only serve a very limited number of locations.
- danaris 3y ago
  I mean, I certainly hope that the future is those things in places where they're practical. There are many places where they just aren't practical—where sidewalks are useless, because the nearest thing to walk or bike to is miles away, the weather gets too inhospitable to walk or bike safely for much of the year, and the places people want to go are just too spread out for trains to be at all viable. For those of us who choose not to live in dense urban areas, I would dearly love to see full self-driving cars someday...but given the challenges we've observed in the last few years, I'm now skeptical as to whether we'll realistically see them arrive.
nytesky 3y ago
I suspect that is more a function of Googles deep pockets. The other players are putting major eggs in self driving, for Google it’s a hobby.
- ra7 3y ago
  Who else has put more eggs in self driving than Waymo/Google? They have a fully autonomous service running in two cities running 24/7, with two more announced. 700,000+ trips in 2023 so far. They’ve spent tens of billions over the years on R&D, custom sensors and vehicles. That doesn’t sound like a hobby to me.
- pb7 3y ago
  Google is pretty damn good at hobbies then. What is everyone else doing for whom this isn't a hobby? Pretty sad that someone's side hustle is doing better than your "major eggs", no? Waymo pioneered self driving and has been quietly in the lead since. Companies like Tesla and Cruise are all smoke, no fire riding on Waymo's coattails in public perception.
  - nytesky 3y ago
    Autonomous driving is not a core business for Google at this point: almost all profits come from ads, some good chunk of revenues from GSuite and cloud, but autonomous driving is orthogonal to the rest of their business. They have achieved great things, and kept a steady pace, but my point was there is no urgency to "deliver" -- it doesn't really reflect in any way on core business, is not necessary for their survival, but is a moonshot that could really pay off. For Tesla and Cruise, it is much more existential that they are not left behind in self driving.
    - pb7 3y ago
      Waymo is not under Google. It is an independent company under Alphabet, unlike something like Cloud or YouTube for example which are under Google. It has the same leadership but the company is very separate. For Waymo, it is an existential crisis to fail at self driving because Google ad money is not funding Waymo.
kotaKat 3y ago
And Cruise went hard with their GM-backed power to lobby to bend rules for them harder and faster than Waymo could. Remember the Firefly? Totally unacceptable to have a low-speed vehicle with no controls. But Cruise? Sure, fuck it, why not have a giant EV Bolt with no controls? Or a giant box-on-wheels?
ra7 3y ago
Tesla has been kept alive only because they are scared to even let drivers take their hands off the wheel. They have very low confidence in the system to allow for driver inattention, let alone completely remove the driver. Numerous software “rewrites” over the years with many buzzwords attached, and they still haven’t clocked a single driverless mile. They also have a huge fan base (investors) who are happy to babysit FSD in order to provide more “training data” and they’ve rationalized themselves whatever little benefit it offers is worthy of the product name.
- hef19898 3y ago
  Tesla cannot abandon FSD, if they did Musk, and by extension (and due to all kinds of financial connetctions and dependencies) all his other companies would be in very serious trouble.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Not at all, Tesla has enough cash on hand to pay everyone out a few billion if there was a judgement wrt FSD. They outran the liability with the brand and sales.
    - te_chris 3y ago
      The comment you're replying to is not talking about court-enforced liabilities. If the pull out of FSD they're basically Mercedes with a 5 year lead on manufacturing. That is categorically not a trillion dollar company and the house of cards leveraged against Tesla stock crumbles.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Nah, there is still enough collective delusion in the brand to keep the stock somewhat propped up vs legacy auto’s slow death. BYD and Tesla are crushing it comparatively and have the supply chain to keep ramping. No one else is selling meaningful volume at this time. Mercedes is certainly not the future in any meaningful way.
ttcbj 3y ago
Yes, but its not really clear to me how to interpret these layoffs. 1. I could understand firing a few top executives, but is laying off a quarter of the staff likely to make the cars safer? Shouldn't they be adding people focused on safety if they intend to continue to pursue it? 2. Far more people each day die in GM's not-self-driving vehicles. Why are they not firing people over that? I guess the generous perspective is that maybe they are trying to change an internal culture? Or maybe reduce their cost base so they have a longer runway in which to emphasize safety? But a concerning perspective, for me, is that they are irrationally prioritizing the negative publicity associated with a single rare/newsworthy incident over the unpublicized/not-newsworthy daily drumbeat of human-caused auto deaths. And that doesn't seem to be good for safety in the long term.
- nyxtom 3y ago
  Large majority of layoffs were non-engineering and specifically targeted in such a way that we can refocus on standardization and benchmarking profiles for a single city re-launch while cutting and revisiting programs wholesale such as commercial operations (which is on hold for some time). We don't have infinite money and need to build standards that can benefit the whole community/industry/regulations. Despite what many are saying - this is being done calculated and methodical.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    >..we can refocus on standardization and benchmarking profiles for a single city re-launch while cutting and revisiting programs wholesale. Should there be a comma after 'standardisation'. Maybe after 'launch', too?
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    How does Cruise focus on standardization by laying off the people who were writing them? Surely you've interacted with the sensors teams, or the kernel teams, or the silicon teams, or the hardware teams, or syseng, or any of the other engineering teams that saw significant cuts?
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Doing nothing kills the most people. Progress is always fatal.
superduperer 3y ago
[dead]
mardifoufs 3y ago
That's funny since people used to say that cruise AND waymo were taking it slow and steady. The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. Though as bad as it is (or isn't, I'm not super informed on the very latest version of FSD), it seems like Tesla has improved a lot recently. Which doesn't necessarily mean it's good at all, just that it was pretty bad when they started the beta. So I'm not sure which approach will end up winning. As weird as it sounds, going about it so slowly just makes you a lot more vulnerable when stuff goes wrong like with the Cruise car accident. Tesla on the other hand is a car manufacturer, so they won't really ever "quit" unless they shut down.
- okdood64 3y ago
  > The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. That's the only heuristic that matters for the public and lawmakers. Like it or not.
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  > The only difference is that waymo hasn't had a major incident. That and they do higher speed roads, offer service during the daytime, service the airport (in Phoenix), use more direct routes, handle more complex maneuvers, have driven a lot more miles and served more trips, and so forth and so on.
panick21_ 3y ago
Of course Tesla has killed the most people they have literally millions of cars with this functionality on the road, comparing that is kind of silly. That said I have not actually hear of any major or fatal accidents on FSD. They have also saved a lot of people by adding advanced detection that most cars on the road simply don't have. So a comparison like that really just doesn't make much sense. Comparing Tesla Autopilot to other quasi-Autopilots makes more sense. The real difference is that Tesla sells cars, makes money and can use this as a feature in their cars. For basic autopilot of course, but also for other things. So its worth doing for them even if they don't reach Level 5. They have not stacked their financial viability on that. Arguably they have stacked part of their credibility on that, but they have lost most of that. Waymo and Cruise basically don't have a relevant product and wont have one for quite a while.

pb7 3y ago

What a massive shakeup from the CEO, through other executives, down to the rank and file. Notably engineering is not affected. Waymo is looking more and more reliable.

oldpersonintx 3y ago

former Cruiser here...its DEAD just kill it already by far the most toxic place I have ever worked, I look forward to dancing on its grave

outside415 3y ago
I also worked in AV for a time. It was like uber bro culture personofied and I didn't even work at uber. for some reason AV just draws out the worst kind of assholes. most of my co workers were from cruise and waymo. their arrogance and awfulness towards other humans was terrible.

nyxtom 3y ago

Our CTO is leading very well through one of the roughest times in our company's history. Despite what many are saying about Cruise right now - it's not down for the count.

oldpersonintx 3y ago
GM needs billions to pay for its union contract, that money will come out of Cruise's corpse
- mehlmao 3y ago
  Maybe they shouldn't have spent $7 billion on stock buybacks?
SeanAnderson 3y ago
What would down for the count look like to you? It seems pretty shaken up from an outsider's perspective. Losing a quarter of the workforce, most of the executive suite, and getting banned from the streets of California seem like difficult challenges to overcome.
- nyxtom 3y ago
  If we saw a wholesale exit of our MLI platform teams I would be concerned. But many here are waiting to see where our CTO is going to lead. Eng was spread very thin attempting to commercialize. CTO's approach appears to be much more methodical so it's sort of a - let's give him a chance
- ActionHank 3y ago
  Considering the number of top performers who leave companies when they see layoffs happening I would say they have likely lost more than a quarter.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    They straight up fired some of their best staff+ engineers today. Does that count as losing them?

gorbachev 3y ago

Did the CEO take full responsibility?

jedberg 3y ago
Yes. He resigned.

cush 3y ago

I want to be open-minded about AI, but I’ll be damned if my tax dollars are going to a self-driving car’s unemployment cheque!

orwin 3y ago
How does it work in the US? Here it's a mandatory insurance you pay on your salary, but then if you're laid off without cause, you get 80% of your salary for X amount of time (sometime the company give the missing 20% for like 2 months, but i'm not sure if it's standard).
- khuey 3y ago
  Companies pay an unemployment insurance payroll tax that goes into a big fund managed by the state and benefits are paid out of that fund. The exact amounts and timing vary a lot from state to state. These state funds are backstopped by the federal government who will lend the states money against future unemployment insurance tax revenue.
- cush 3y ago
  No idea. I was making a joke about the headline which reads to me like the cars were laid off

ModernMech 3y ago

Hm, this would probably be me today if I had been offered a position there. Weeks before Christmas! Those guys were pretty cool but from the very beginning I always felt Cruise was built to be acquired. That seemed to be the whole plan: build a dream team, redo what we did in the DARPA challenges except more impressive, get bought by some big company… profit. It all worked out but there was never a plan after that it seems, because the darpa approach was never going to solve autonomous driving, even with a mega corp backing R&D.

joshuawright11 3y ago

Since the CEO / founders have already "resigned", this feels like GM is moving towards winding down the company or at the very least strongly re-thinking their commitment to backing this long term. Getting to FSD is probably moving a lot slower than they hoped and it's looking more and more like it will be another decade (or multiple) until a self driving company can turn a dime of profit. GM doesn't strike me as a particularly innovative company so the idea of a decades long moonshot probably isn't very appealing to them. The dragging / lying to regulators incident was bad but axing the founders / CEO seems like it would have been enough if GM were excited about the company long term.

pavon 3y ago
I disagree. The cuts are focused on commercial operations roles, not engineering. I see this as a sign that the adults have entered the room, and realized more work is needed to get the technology ready for commercial use rather than trying to prematurely skip to the end to keep up appearances with Waymo.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  The press release says the cuts were focused on operations, but that doesn't mean engineering was unaffected. Even the functional safety related teams were affected.

DonHopkins 3y ago

Well on their way to having a self-driving company!

babl-yc 3y ago

Blog post from Cruise leadership discussing the layoffs https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/cruise-team-updates/ https://getcruise.com/news/blog/2023/cruise-team-updates/ Most of the layoffs are within the operations side that assumed broader immediate rollout, and engineering is "largely not impacted."

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

HumblyTossed 3y ago

So does this mean they just parked 24% of their self-driving cars?

bigtex 3y ago

So is Tesla the last OG company still claiming that Level 5 cars are around the corner?