“We have a great plan in place that goes out many years into the future,” Vogt tellsin his first interview since the management shakeup. “We've got the full support of not just the Cruise board of directors, but also GM leadership and the GM board of directors to execute on that plan so we're feeling pretty good about our position. Nothing about our mission or our objectives has changed at all. We're just marching forward on that plan.
Billions of investment dollars have flowed into driverless vehicle developers over the past five years, including Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, Ford- and Volkswagen-backed Argo AI, Amazon’s Zoox and delivery-bot developer Nuro, as well as Cruise. Yet the timeline for broad commercialization of autonomous tech remains murky. Waymo generates revenue from autonomous ride and delivery services in suburban Phoenix, but hasn’t said when it expects to expand into other major cities.
Starting next year Cruise will add purpose-built, electric Origin vans supplied by GM to its fleet and thinks having them do double-duty throughout the day, acting as robotaxis during rush hour peaks and shifting to grocery and food deliveries when ride demand drops, will maximize revenue, Vogt says.
“With the rideshare demand there's usually a morning rush and an evening rush. During those downtimes, late at night or in the middle of the day, we plan to have our Origins convert into something that can do deliveries,” Vogt said. “What that does is it makes the Cruise service overall have a much lower structural cost than anyone who's doing just delivery or just ride share because you're getting a higher utilization rate from the fleet.
In November the company showed off a cargo module designed to quickly slide into the Origin’s cabin with eight insulated, individual lockers for grocery and food orders. “It can slide in and out in less than five minutes and convert a rideshare vehicle to a delivery vehicle,” Vogt said.
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