It has been a controversial few years for the company and cuts are expected to affect the CEO as well as other executives.
General Motors (GM), which acquired autonomous vehicle company Cruise, has announced that almost half of all staff within the Cruise division are to be let go, as it calls an end to its robotaxi business. Reportedly more than 1,000 of the roughly 2,100 employees are to be layed off, as the company redirects its focus to the hands free driver assistance system and personal autonomous vehicles.
The layoffs were announced by Cruise’s president and CAO Craig Glidden and will also impact CEO Marc Whitten, chief human resources officer Nilka Thomas, chief safety officer Steve Kenner and global head of public policy Rob Grant. Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s chief technologist, will stay on through the end of April to aid the transition.
GM first announced it would be undergoing a mass restructuring in December of last year, stating it would no longer be funding the robotaxi project and instead would focus on the delivery of personal self-driving vehicles. The organisation noted the marketplace had become too competitive and the resources needed to scale and grow, too high.
In an email issued company wide, Gidden said, “as a result of the change in strategy we announced in December, today we will part with nearly 50pc of our Cruise employee base, through a reduction in force. Anyone who has been through a reduction knows that days like this are extremely difficult and today is no different.
With our move away from the ride-hail business and toward providing autonomous vehicles to customers alongside GM, our staffing and resource needs have dramatically changed. Today’s actions align our teams to our new needs, and focus our efforts on continuing to build world-class AV technology.”
It has been a difficult couple of years for Cruise. In 2023 the company was at the centre of a dangerous road incident, which saw a pedestrian pinned under a Cruise vehicle. Also in 2023 the company’s vehicles were accused of blocking emergency service workers from reaching a fatally injured person at the site of an accident. Other reports of laneway blocks and misleading accident reporting have surfaced also.
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