GM's Cruise plans to resume robotaxi testing: Bloomberg

General Motors' (GM) robotaxi service Cruise is preparing to resume testing of its autonomous driving systems across select US cities, according to Bloomberg. California suspended Cruise's license to operate following an incident with a pedestrian and one of the company's driverless cars.

Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Pras Subramanian highlights Cruise's preliminary plans to resume testing.

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Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Transcripción del vídeo

JULIE HYMAN: General Motors is getting ready to resume testing of its robotaxi unit, Cruise, in select cities. That's according to Bloomberg. Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian joins us now with more. This was a tricky endeavor for them when it was going on. That's why they paused it. So sort of contextualize why it would be a big deal for them to resume.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Well, they had to resume at some point. Right? There's too much money on the line. They had to somehow get back in the game here. And according to Bloomberg, they're going to do it on a smaller scale. Cities like Dallas and Houston, something like 10 cars or so, running. But no passengers. Right? That's the wrinkle here. They're going to have them kind of out in the wild there, doing some stops, and things like that.

But Cruise, for its part, had a statement saying that they have not set any timeline for redeployment. They didn't deny the story, but they didn't say that this is actually happening, and that they need to gain the trust of authorities and the public before they kind of continue. And I think that's kind of a big deal, right, getting the-- because it's one thing if the cars are out there with no passengers, but they're still out there. Right?

I thought they might have gone with a human copilot just to begin with. I think that would be, in my opinion, would be the right way to sort of redeploy. But we'll see what these cities of Houston and Dallas say. But yeah, GM has to get this going because it's sort of a big, big albatross for them.

- And any reason you think they might be targeting-- because I was reading through it. They're kind of targeting Texas specifically, right? Is that maybe kind of looser regulatory backdrop? Is that part of it perhaps?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: I'm not sure about that. But it sort of makes sense in terms of maybe there's just less human sort of density than San Francisco or Los Angeles. I think Houston and Dallas-- probably Houston, have you ever been to Houston? It's just kind of like sparse urban sprawl. So maybe that works for them there. So--

JULIE HYMAN: Where are they in terms of the robotaxi endeavors that are out there from other companies? Because nobody is fully deployed yet.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, nobody is. But they were pretty deep in, like I said, Dallas, and LA, San Francisco. Obviously, San Francisco with the accident that happened there, in these geofenced areas, I think Austin too. Places like that, where these are bigger populations, bigger cities. So I think they were the most deployed of any of these robotaxi kind of endeavors.

JULIE HYMAN: Interesting.

- All right, Pras. Thank you. Appreciate it.