According to a recent post from its CEO, robotaxi operator Cruise is now operating nonstop operations in San Francisco. The post said we will see full Cruise robotaxi operations open up to other cities, which may soon include Dallas, Texas – according to a recent company job posting.
Cruise is a robotaxi startup founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 2013. In the last decade, the company (along with plenty of support from GM) has made tremendous progress in its home state of California, where it continues to try and expand.
Services that began in San Francisco have since grown to Phoenix, Arizona, and, most recently, Austin, Texas. In February, the Cruise president, CEO, and cofounder, Kyle Vogt, shared that the company had surpassed one million miles driven without anyone behind the wheel.
In many ways, the city by the bay has become a proving ground for Cruise’s electric robotaxis, and its hilly, congested terrain will act as a testing site for yet another major milestone – around-the-clock robotaxi operations.
Cruise fully operational in San Francisco, eyes Dallas next
According to a recent LinkedIn post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, the robotaxi network is now running 24/7 rides across San Francisco, beginning with employees. As The Kilowatts points out on Twitter, nonemployees in the San Francisco area are still limited to about one-third of the city between f 10:00 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. In his post, Vogt said that in accordance with safety policies, around-the-clock public rides will roll out “very soon.”
The post also said that the systems being implemented in San Francisco are the same that power the long-promised Cruise Origin robotaxi, which, according to Vogt, is “just around the corner.” The CEO spoke to Cruise’s expansion in San Francisco and beyond:
Operating robotaxis in SF has become a litmus test for business viability. If it can work here, there’s little doubt it can work just about everywhere. You’ll soon see us open up full operations in other cities. The capabilities and machine learning systems we’ve built to handle things in SF have proven themselves in many other cities around the world.
Now that San Francisco is expanding operations, we should see 24/7 robotaxis in some of the cities mentioned above first, but Cruise appears to be adding Dallas to its list too. According to a job description posted by Cruise, it is seeking out a deputy general manager and commercial operations for the Dallas market. Here are some of the responsibilities for that role:
- Launch and rapidly scale our first driverless paid service in Dallas
- Strategically plan and complete staffing, facility and hours of service expansion in a fast paced scaling environment
- Establish and drive the highest standards for driverless operations to ensure safe operations for riders and operations personnel alike
Based on the description of the post, entry into the Dallas market feels imminent, especially with robotaxi operations already underway about 200 miles south in Austin.
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