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Cruise, the self-driving company backed by General Motors and Honda, announced a public waitlist for its robotaxi service in San Francisco. It’s a significant step for the company that has previously been beset by delays in its quest to get paying customers into its autonomous ride-hailing vehicles.
The company recently gave GM CEO Mary Barra a ride in one of its fully driverless vehicles in downtown San Francisco, as well as a few non-employees.
According to Cruise:
We’re also opening a public waitlist at www.getcruise.com for when we’re ready to offer even more rides to San Franciscans. We’re calling this the Cruise Rider Community program and people who are nominated by employees or sign up on the waitlist will be incorporated into the pipeline to be among our first public riders.
Cruise also announced an additional $1.35 billion investment from Japan’s SoftBank.
In 2018, Cruise secured a $2.25 billion investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund. Later that year, GM teamed up with Honda to design a purpose-built self-driving car. The Japanese automaker said it would devote $2 billion to the effort over 12 years, including a $750 million equity investment in Cruise. In 2019, Cruise secured a $1.15 billion investment from GM, SoftBank, Honda, and T. Rowe Price Group. That last investment valued Cruise at $19 billion.
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