GM’s self-driving car subsidiary Cruise lays off 900 employees

San Francisco, Dec 15: GM's self-driving car subsidiary Cruise has laid off 900 employees, or about 24 per cent of its workforce.

According to TechCrunch, the layoffs occured to cut costs and attempt to revamp the company.

“We knew this day was coming, but that does not make it any less difficult — especially for those whose jobs are affected,” Cruise president and CTO Mo Elshenawy wrote in an email to employees.

“We are making staff reductions that will affect 24 per cent of full-time Cruisers, through no fault of their own. We are simplifying and focusing our efforts to return with an exceptional service in one city to start with and focusing on the Bolt platform for this first step before we scale,” he added.

As a result, the company is reducing employee counts in operations and other areas.

“These impacts are largely outside of engineering, although some Tech positions are impacted also,” said Elshenawy.

The impacted employees will remain on payroll through February 12, 2024 and will be eligible for an additional eight weeks of pay. Long-term employees have been offered an additional two weeks’ pay per every year at Cruise over three years.

Last month, Kyle Vogt, co-founder and CEO of Cruise, resigned in less than a month after the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) suspended Cruise’s deployment and driverless testing permits.

On October 2, a pedestrian, initially hit by a human-driven car and landed in the path of a Cruise robotaxi, was ran over and dragged 20 feet by the autonomous vehicle.

A video showed the robotaxi braking aggressively and coming to a stop over the woman.

The DMV order stopped Cruise’s robotaxi operations in San Francisco just months after receiving the last necessary permit to commercialise its operations.

The order of suspension said that Cruise allegedly withheld video footage from an ongoing investigation.