General Motors’ 79%-owned Cruise robo-taxi operation is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission for failures by senior Cruise executives to fully and immediately disclose to state and federal regulators that one of the operation’s self-driving cars had dragged a woman down a San Francisco street after she was hit by another car.
Cruise and GM now face the challenge of convincing enforcement agencies, regulators and the public that Cruise officials did not intend to cover up the gravity of the Oct. 2 incident, even though they failed to make key details of the accident clear to state and federal regulators in meetings the next day, according to a 195-page report by the law firm Quinn Emanuel that was commissioned by Cruise’s board.
A separate report detailed technology failures that caused the Cruise EV to drag the victim down the street, rather than stopping immediately.
The Quinn Emanuel report and the technology assessment by Exponent offer plenty for opponents of wider robo-taxi deployment to work with as they argue against looser state and federal regulation of AVs. That could be trouble for AV operators such as Waymo and Zoox.
GM Chief Executive Mary Barra could face more questions about Cruise and the mishandling of the Oct. 2 incident when the automaker releases fourth quarter results Jan. 30.
Despite $8 billion in cumulative losses at Cruise, the GM CEO has stood by her bet that Cruise’s self-driving vehicle technology could generate $50 billion a year in revenue by 2030 and vowed last month to “right the ship” at Cruise.
The Quinn Emanuel report does not mention Barra by name or address what she knew and when about Cruise’s response to the Oct. 2 incident.
The report does suggest that GM officials pushed Cruise executives to be more forthcoming with regulators. For example, the report states that Cruise submitted two reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that “did not mention the pullover maneuver and pedestrian dragging; the third did after consultation with GM.”
