Cruise Gets $5 Billion From GM to Start Production of Its Origin Robotaxis

In January of last year, the company unveiled the Cruise Origin, a Level 4–5 autonomous vehicle designed for ride hailing services. The Origin is a self-driving robotaxi that was designed from the ground up rather than retrofitted from a non-autonomous vehicle. It has no mirrors, pedals, or steering wheel. The vehicle is all-electric and is said to have a one-million-mile lifespan.

Since it was first announed, Origin has already reached a few milestones. The California Department of Motor Vehicles granted Cruise a licence to test fully driverless vehicles in October 2020. Two months later, the company began testing its vehicles on San Francisco’s streets without a human safety driver present.

Recently Honda announced a partnership with Cruise in order to introduce the Origin to Japan as part of Honda's Mobility as a Service (MaaS) plan. Since then, engineers from GM, Honda and Cruise have worked to kept the everything on track for the production of the robotaxis at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck Plant (now rebranded as Factory ZERO assembly plant).

But the company needed the money to roll off the assembly line its first Origins – and it got them. Cruise secured $5 billion from GM’s financial division to purchase thousands of autonomous vehicles. The first test vehicles have just begun production.

”This bumps up Cruise’s total war chest to over $10 billion as we enter commercialization.” says Cruise CEO Dan Ammann in a blog post.

While we don’t have more details about the a launch date, GM announced plans to invest $2.2 billion into its factory to produce the all-electric GMC HUMMER EV pickup, the first of a variety of all-electric trucks and SUVs later this year. Cruise Origin will follow soon after it undergoes intensive testing this summer.