GM is pulling the plug on its robotaxi efforts

General Motors is pulling the plug on its efforts to develop a fleet of driverless taxis and will focus on driver-assistance features that require a driver to be ready to take control of the car, the company said Tuesday.

General Motors is pulling the plug on its efforts to develop a fleet of driverless taxis and will focus on driver-assistance features that require a driver to be ready to take control of the car, the company said Tuesday. GM is dropping robotaxi efforts “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market,” the company said in a statement. The Detroit-based automaker’s robotaxi efforts had been run by a company called Cruise, of which GM owns 90%. Many of the Cruise employees who have worked on self-driving technology will now be shifted over to GM to work on driver assist features, such as Super Cruise, the company’s hands-off, eyes-on driving feature, now offered on more than 20 GM vehicles. GM said the move will cut costs by $1 billion annually after the combination is complete. GM said it will instead focus on driver assistance features rather than fully automous vehicles; developing a fleet of robotaxis would have required more than $10 billion, the company added. GM faces competition in the robotaxi market from Google’s Waymo unit, in partnership with Uber, as well as from ride-hailing and taxi services that use human drivers. And earlier this fall, Tesla announced plans for new driverless vehicles without steering wheels, brakes or accelerators, as well as for a robotaxi service that would allow Tesla owners to rent out their cars to the service when they don’t need it for their own use. But GM has decided that’s no longer a sector in which it makes sense to compete. GM CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday that the company decided the robotaxi service was not part of GM’s core business, and that shifting its self-driving technology efforts to driver assist features available on privately-owned cars will help with the products it offers to car buyers.