Cruise ramps up Houston operations after 7-month hiatus as autonomous vehicles return for test drives

HOUSTON – Cruise is back in charge!

After a seven-month pit stop for safety checks, the self-driving car maker has once again hit the roads of Houston, ready to showcase its cutting-edge autonomous vehicles.

Cruise sent KPRC 2 digital producer Holly Galvan a statement regarding its test drive expansion in Houston:

Cruise expands test drives to Houston. Similar to our work with Phoenix and Dallas, we will begin with human-driven vehicles and, in the coming weeks, guided by safety, move to supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver present behind the wheel, ready to take over if necessary. This work is part of our ongoing efforts to create maps and validate the end-to-end performance of our autonomous driving technology in preparation for future driverless service. You can learn more about this process here.

Cruise’s AV stack is based on AI technology that learns from information gathered from our driving experience and continuously retrains and evolves our models. The fleet learns from every intersection, construction zone and road sign it encounters, and applies that knowledge to other environments and scenarios – the same way a human driver learns, but with much more data and the ability to transmit this continuous learning throughout the world. entire fleet. Because no two cities are the same, we plan to conduct this manual and supervised drive in several cities, including Houston, Dallas, and Phoenix. As we continue to work to rebuild trust and determine which city we will operate in without a driver, we also remain focused on continually improving our performance and overall approach to safety.

SEE ALSO: Would you trust self-driving cars on Houston’s roads?

The company shared the following on social media:

“Houston, we missed you!” Today we hit the road again in Houston where we will capitalize on the knowledge acquired last year. We will start with human-driven vehicles and move to supervised autonomous driving with a safety driver behind the wheel in the coming weeks, guided by safety.

Background

On October 27, 2023, Cruise announced the cessation of its driverless operations across all of its fleets, including in Houston, in order to “rebuild public trust.” This decision was not linked to any new road incidents. The San Francisco-based company, launching in Houston and Austin in 2023, was under federal investigation for risky behavior near pedestrians.

RELATED: Self-driving car maker Cruise shuts down fleets in Houston and elsewhere in effort to ‘rebuild public trust’ amid federal investigation

CNBC reported that Cruise, the autonomous vehicle startup owned by General Motors, suspended all of its driverless operations after crashes led to investigations, a disagreement with state regulators and a suspension of its licenses in California. The company said on X, formerly known as Twitter:

“Part of that means taking a hard look at ourselves and how we work at Cruise, even if that means doing things that are uncomfortable or difficult. With this in mind, we have decided to proactively suspend driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take the time to review our processes, systems and tools and consider how we can better operate to gain public trust. This is not linked to any new incidents on the road and supervised audio-visual operations will continue. We believe this is the right thing to do at a time when we need to be extremely vigilant about risks, relentlessly focused on safety and taking steps to restore public trust.

Founded by CEO Kyle Vogt in 2013, Cruise had already launched driverless operations in San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, Dallas and Miami, in addition to Houston.