- Hey, it's Andy with The Verge, and we just got our
first exclusive look at the new
autonomous vehicle from Cruise, they call it the Origin.
It really didn't look like any car I've ever seen before
and that's really kind of the first impression you get
as soon as you approach this vehicle.
The outside of it has the same dimensions
as a normal crossover SUV,
but that's really kind of where the similarities end.
(bass music)
So when you wanna get in to the vehicle,
you first have to put in a code on its keypad,
that's on the door on the outside,
and it sort of opens as if, like,
it's a minivan that opens from both sides.
You get in and you have a very
spacious interior of the vehicle,
and that's obvious because there's no steering wheel,
there's no pedals, there's no gear shaft,
there's not even really a dashboard
or any infotainment system.
There's just two bench seats facing each other
and this sort of vast space in between them.
- It's designed to be comfortable if it's shared,
but if it's just you you got so much space in here,
you can really like, stretch out, and it's pretty great.
And so I think it's a good experience,
whether it's just you or a lot of other people.
- You can do yoga in here probably.
- Absolutely you can do yoga.
Well, as long as your seatbelt's on,
I don't know how that works.
- Now you may have heard of some
other self driving operators like Waymo,
which used to be part of Google,
and Argo which is backed by Ford and Volkswagen.
Cruise is tied very closely to GM, General Motors,
which is the largest auto manufacturer in the US.
Cruise has 160 self driving test vehicles
that are Chevy Volts, electric vehicles,
here in San Francisco,
where they hope to eventually launch a fully
driverless robo taxi service.
But more importantly, they've raised about seven billion
dollars in venture capital cash over the last
couple of years, which is really just like,
a staggering amount of money for a self driving car company.
Especially when you consider that they haven't even
scaled a commercial product yet.
Now about two point seven billion of that
is coming from the other big auto manufacturer
in Cruise's corner, and that's Honda.
This doesn't look like any other car in the road today,
and that's because Cruise says
it wants to move beyond the car,
arguing that many of the problems that we have today
could be traced to single occupancy vehicles.
- Well there's some things about
removing the driver, and the steering wheel, and the pedal,
that eliminates some complexity and cost in the vehicle.
But as you can see here, the way vehicles are designed,
normally they have a hood in the front where the engine is,
and some storage in the trunk.
But when you don't need all that stuff,
and you don't need things placed where they are,
we can have this enormous, spacious cabin
without taking up any more space on the road
than a regular car would, which is kind of insane.
It leads to a far greater experience for the rider,
but then because we built this car
around the idea of not having a driver,
and specifically being used in a ride share fleet,
that kind of business,
you know the vehicle is engineered to last a million miles,
and all the interior components are replaceable.
The compute is replaceable, the sensors are replaceable,
and what that does is it drives the cost per mile down
way low than you could ever reach.
- Now Cruise insists that this is not just a fancy concept,
which is a really important distinction to make.
Now we've seen dozens of radical car concepts
over the years that have re-imagined interiors
that look like fancy living rooms or bedrooms.
But none of those really have any chance
of hitting the road anytime soon, if ever.
Cruise says that this car is going into production.
But it's gonna be tough getting there.
Cruise needs a special exemption from the federal government
in order to mass produce vehicles without
traditional human controls like steering wheels and pedals.
And the federal government only grants about
2,500 exemptions a year.
Now GM put in its request for an exemption
back in 2018, but it hasn't gotten it yet,
and it's unclear when exactly this car is going
to be approved to hit the road.
Now Cruise has hit some bumps in the road before.
Its plan to launch a robo taxi service in San Francisco
before the end of 2019 didn't really happen.
It said the technology wasn't really ready yet.
And Cruise has said it wanted to test its vehicles
in New York City, but that never really went anywhere.
Now I think it's safe to say that Cruise
is feeling the heat from its competitors
like Uber and Tesla, Waymo and Ford.
Now the Google self driving car project
recently started giving people rides in its
self driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans,
with no safety driver in the front seat,
which is a pretty enormous leap.
But the van still has steering wheels and pedals.
But removing the safety driver is a pretty dramatic
way of saying that this technology is here,
it's ready, and it works.
Cruise missed its chance to be the first to launch
a taxi service and it missed its chance
to be the first to take safety drivers
out of the front of the vehicle.
But with this car, it has the opportunity to be the first
to do something maybe even more radical,
that's change the conversation, move beyond the car,
and come up with an entirely different
way of getting around.
Now I know I said this wasn't a concept,
but if you'd like concepts,
check out the videos that we did at CES,
there's a lot of really crazy things that we saw this year,
check it out at YouTube.com/theverge.