Uber Users Will Soon Be Able to Order an Autonomous Cruise Car, But Not in California

As soon as next year, Uber users in certain cities could have the option of summoning one of Cruise’s driverless Chevy Bolts, an announcement both companies made this week.

The feature won’t be available in San Francisco — where both companies are based — or anywhere else in California after the Department of Motor Vehicles pulled Cruise’s testing permits last October because it found the vehicles were “not safe for the public’s operation.”

The California DMV first granted Cruise the authority to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in 2015, and last August, the company was cleared by the California Public Utilities Commission to operate without a driver in San Francisco.

Then, in October, a pedestrian who had been hit by a human driver in San Francisco became pinned under the tire of a Cruise vehicle after it dragged the pedestrian as it came to a stop. Cruise, at the time, called it an “extremely rare event” but suspended testing its driverless vehicles across the country shortly after.

The company’s permits in California remain suspended indefinitely, according to the DMV. As of May, the agency said it had “provided Cruise with additional questions regarding the reinstatement of their permits.”

Tiffany Testo, a spokesperson for Cruise, told KQED that the first cities to have the driverless option on Uber would likely be where Cruise is currently conducting supervised testing with safety drivers: Phoenix, Dallas or Houston.

Cruise resumed safety testing in those three cities in June.

The partnership brings together two companies that have fallen behind in the race for autonomous robotaxis to Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.

“We are excited to partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable, autonomous driving to even more people, unlocking a new era of urban mobility,” Marc Whitten, CEO of Cruise, said in a statement.

In the joint statement, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi cited the company’s position as “the largest mobility and delivery platform.”

Earlier this month, Cruise agreed to recall nearly 1,200 robotaxis, ending an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board over unnecessarily hard braking. The NTSB says those issues have since been “remedied through software updates that are intended to reduce the risk of unexpected braking maneuvers, including by improvements to perception, prediction, and planning.”

Cruise’s safety issues also centered on the vehicles’ behavior around pedestrians in roadways, including crosswalks, in some situations. The NTSB previously raised concerns that Cruise’s vehicles didn’t exercise the right amount of caution.