Cruise, a majority subsidiary of General Motors, will take over the self-driving startup Voyage as part of another large autonomous vehicle merger. The announcement came less than a week after it was first announced that the two companies were discussing an acquisition. The terms of the contract were not disclosed.
Cruise operates its autonomous vehicles primarily in dense urban environments such as downtown San Francisco, while Voyage oversees a fleet of low-speed autonomous vehicles that provide rides for multiple residents Age communities. Both companies have tested their vehicles without a safety driver behind the wheel and are aiming to introduce a full-fledged commercial robot taxi service.
“The self-driving industry is consolidating”
“The self-driving industry is consolidating and the trillion-dollar market leaders are rapidly evolving,” said Oliver Cameron, CEO of Voyage in a statement. “Having been closely associated with the AV industry for the past five years, I can confidently say that Cruise – with its advanced self-drive technology, unique automaker partnerships and an all-electric specialty vehicle with no human control – is ready to make the clear To be a leader. “
Voyage is a spin-off of Udacity, an online learning service that offers courses in driverless technology. Cameron led the startup’s open source self-driving project before starting his own company. Sebastian Thrun, chairman of Udacity and one of the founders of Google’s self-driving car project, briefly served as chairman of Voyage before a conflict forced him to resign. The company operates a fleet of self-driving cars in two retirement homes, one near San Jose, California and the other north of Orlando, Florida, both called The Villages. But Voyage doesn’t want to be seen as an exclusive AV service for seniors.
“I think sometimes people think Voyage is all about slow speed, zero to 25 mph autonomy,” said Cameron an interview with The Verge in 2019. “Were not. We’ll upgrade our capabilities to zero to 35 over time [mph]to zero to 55 [mph]to zero to 65 [mph]. And one day we will connect all the roads in the US with a level 4 self-driving car. But we’re not going to say that will be delivered next year. And we’re not going to wait to build a business before that’s done. “
“I think sometimes people think Voyage is all about slow speed, zero to 25 mph autonomy.”
Cruise is certainly one of the best capitalized autonomous vehicle companies in the world. In 2018 it secured both a Investment of $ 2.25 billion from SoftBank Vision Fund and a $ 2 billion investment from Honda. In 2019 Cruise landed a $ 1.15 billion investment from GM, SoftBank, Honda and T. Rowe Price Group, which valued the company at $ 19 billion.
There have been a number of mergers in the world of autonomous vehicles in recent years: Amazon has taken over Zoox;; Aurora took over Uber’s autonomous vehicle division;; Apple has bought the distressed startup Drive.ai and considered (at one point) an association with Hyundai; Intel bought Mobileye;; and Delphi acquired nuTonomy and became Aptiv, which then merged with Hyundai Get motional. The AV industry has shrunk as the target dates for mass adoption of autonomous vehicles are getting further and further away.
Cruise recently started testing his fully driverless vehicles in San Francisco For the first time, but the company still doesn’t allow non-employees to drive in its vehicles. Cruise had planned to launch a commercial taxi service in 2019 but not doneand it has not yet publicly committed to a new date.
Last year, Cruise unveiled the Cruise Origin, a completely driverless prototype of a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals, or controls typically associated with human driving. The vehicle that will go into production at GM plant in Detroit-Hamtramck, was built to be shared by multiple passengers – although it remains to be seen how much appetite there is for shared vehicles in a post-COVID world. Cruise recently unveiled a number of new security protocols designed to keep people socially out of the way while driving and rehabilitate the vehicle between fares.
