
The Cruise Origin - tzhenghao
https://www.getcruise.com/origin/
======
thebradbain
This is _exactly_ the use case I think self-driving cars are perfect for: a
shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers
within cities – eliminating the need for parking and allowing cities to
reclaim that ROW for other uses (bigger sidewalks, bikeways, parklets/seating,
or even dedicated bus lanes and light rail for high capacity routes, maybe
even housing in some spots), finally allowing vehicles to become a crucial
supplement to higher capacity public transportation rather than a competitor
to it, and hopefully decrease the amount of space dedicated to cars (think
highways and sprawl in addition to parking) within cities.

I hope they can pull this off.

~~~
fxtentacle
You are describing a bus company ;)

"a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers
within cities"

And just like existing bus companies, the self-driving ones will also require
you to take a detour so that other passengers can be picked up or dropped off
along the way.

So the main novelty is that you eliminate about $0.2 per minute in salary, but
in exchange you now have to maintain much more complicated vehicles with much
more expensive replacement parts.

Oh and have you ever considered that the same people that you hate meeting on
the bus could also be combined into your ride? Except that now they are not 3
weirdos out of 80 people but 3 out of 4.

So unless this is so expensive that most people cannot afford it, it'll have
the same drawbacks that rich people currently hate about taking a public bus.

I expect these companies to lead to more traffic, because afterwards you will
have the regular poor-people bus and in addition the almost empty rich-people
bus vehicles.

~~~
djannzjkzxn
I’m wondering if you have ever ridden a bus, and also a shared Uber? The car
gets you where you are going a lot faster than the bus, because you need to
wait for at most 2 other stops instead of 17 or whatever, and you never need a
transfer. Whether or not this argument convinces you, experiencing it yourself
makes the difference obvious. It’s one of those things where you can actually
do an experiment to find out the answer instead of just arguing about it. You
could also try entering a destination into google maps and compare the
estimated arrival time with bus vs Uber.

The self-driving car will presumably be a similar experience to the Uber, but
addresses the labor issues that are the main problem with that model.

~~~
Juliate
The Uber-like "pick me up where I am" is a pre-fit incentive that will be
dropped later.

I take buses regularly. Uber too. Taxis too.

All in all, the de-humanizing/automation part that's getting traction from
capital. It's not a strictly human/modern need that's being met, it's an
addictive service (faster, exclusive) that's being sold and cost-optimized.

You can be certain that the day Uber-automated-cars are the norm for transit,
for cost/efficiency reasons, you will be kindly asked to join a specific pick-
up point; and off-loaded at a specific location as well.

Those locations will be computed & decided by the provider, not you (you know,
bus). Unless you pay another premium (taxis).

~~~
wayoutthere
What you describe is a car service with an automated driver. Car services have
existed for decades, and saving $20-25/hr on a driver isn't really _that_ big
of a net gain. The biggest innovation Uber offered is app-based dispatch.

There is a lot of skepticism that automated vehicles will ever happen without
massive infrastructure changes that remove human drivers from the road in
large numbers. The liability issues are huge -- accidents _will_ happen and
people will die. In a case where fault must be determined between an
autonomous vehicle and a human driver, human judges / juries are going to
overwhemlingly side with the human. If anything, automated vehicles will
require _more_ costly regulation than human drivers do.

Car services are a hard business to make money in because the job isn't very
skilled, so there was a lot of regulation in place to ensure those services
were priced in such a way that they continued to be reliable. Uber sidestepped
a lot of that regulation through creative accounting and VC subsidization, but
my guess is that when Uber and Lyft implode in a year or two, much of it will
be reintroduced to fill the smoking hole they will leave in last-mile transit
since they put the taxi companies out of business.

~~~
rayiner
Getting rid of the driver is huge. Even with mass transit, where there is a
huge ratio of drivers to passengers, labor is the dominant cost.

> Personnel expenses are the largest portion of Metrobus budget. For FY2019,
> personnel cost is estimated at $522.5 million or 80.2 percent of Metrobus
> budget, which represents a decrease of $27.7 million from FY2018 budget.

~~~
peter422
Is that just drivers or also the mechanics, planners, IT, etc. There are many
more personnel than drivers necessary to run a giant public transit dept, and
many would still be necessary with self driving cars/busses.

------
aerovistae
No release date or price or anything? I honestly don't even know what this is.
Is it for the city or for the individual? What are its capabilities? I sure
would love ANY concrete details. This is all just tech marketing speak, same
old bullshit.

~~~
Animats
Yes. Cruise has been "fake it til you make it" since their original demo
video. Now "all vehicles shown on road are renders" in fine print.

Here are the CA DMV's autonomous vehicle accident reports for 2019.[1] Cruise
has a lot of them. Mostly being rear-ended by a human-driven car. A
surprisingly large number are with the vehicle being driven manually, or right
after the human driver took over. True driverless still seems a long way off
given those results.

I've seen Cruise cars in SF, most recently making a left turn off Union St in
manual mode.

GM's first try at self-driving, Firebird III in 1958, was far cooler than this
mini-bus thing.

The mini-bus area seems a good place to start with self-driving. I was once
thinking airport parking lot shuttles. Controlled environment, low speed -
that could work. But the financial numbers don't work out. You get rid of the
driver cost, but you add sizable engineering cost and vehicle cost, and you
don't sell many vehicles that way. Local Motors and some other startups have
been struggling quietly in that space for years now. Local Motors' Olli has
three live installations, with about six vehicles total, all very recent. A
college campus, a casino area, and a dedicated track at an industrial park are
the public installations. Demos, basically. The thing is so slow that walking
might be faster, and any bicycle or electric scooter would be much faster. Not
fast enough to get people from Economy Parking to the terminal.

Navya, from France, seems to be further along. They provided the self-driving
shuttles for the Las Vegas strip. They have a number of live mini-bus
installations in Europe. They've announced an autonomous cab, but it is not
deployed yet.

This is still something that can only be done if someone is willing to finance
a money-loser. However, this is perhaps the best time in history for that.

[1]
[https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316)

[2] [https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649](https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649)

~~~
akadruid1
"Finance a money loser" is exactly how local government has been deploying
buses all over my country for decades. I assume many countries are like this.
Outside of major cities, the main users of the 100,000s of buses are those who
cannot drive, primarily school children, disabled and elderly. The bus users
pay more per mile than car owners, and the majority of the population pays a
lot of taxation and air pollution. Removing vehicle emissions is a no-brainer,
but removing the driver makes it possible to replace 50+ seat buses every hour
with 4-6 seat buses every 5 mins and vary the routes or add additional
vehicles dynamically in response to demand. Sadly this will take a long time -
local government won't do anything until forced or until they see an obvious
vote winner

~~~
zip1234
Cars aren't a money loser? Think of all those parking spots that cities pay
for as well as the massive road infrastructure (as well as extra utilities
that have to be run to account for urban sprawl). Cars are massively
subsidized.

------
Nition
Is there a rule these days that your startup isn't allowed to clearly describe
what its product is?

Anyway, I guess this is an unmanned self-driving taxi service. Looks good,
honestly. If it's significantly cheaper than a taxi with human driver, then
maybe it really could help people not need to own a car. Especially if they
can optimise routes to get more people riding at once.

Having to hunt for what the thing actually is also got me to notice the small
disclaimer though:

> All on-road images of the Origin are renderings.

~~~
yingw787
[https://medium.com/hackernoon/for-the-love-of-god-please-
tel...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell-me-what-
your-company-does-c2f0b835ab92)

~~~
Nition
Well at least someone else has noticed. Off-topic but I've also started seeing
modern software websites with no screenshots, to the point that I can get a
better idea of what a product is like from the screenshots on Google Images
than I can from all the text and pretty graphics on the site itself.

~~~
prawn
I suspect they do that because every update to your software/interface then
renders your example screenshots outdated. For a startup at least and in my
experience, that's a painful distraction when you want to just focus on
building and getting people to your site. But I also go looking for
screenshots and appreciate sites that provide them up front.

~~~
saberdancer
Quite possible but in that case I usually treat the website with scepticism.
There are plenty of "fake it till you make it" type of products out there, and
no screenshots or photographs on the site is a big signal for problem in my
opinion.

Getting new screenshots doesn't seem very work intensive plus you can easily
put screenshots of an earlier version and a disclaimer that the screenshots
may not be fully up to date.

~~~
prawn
Big companies do it as well, to the point where I can't tell if it's split
tested and proven more effective, or just a stylistic thing that they think is
more important than effectiveness?

------
truebosko
Why can't we just invest in buses? This will become the luxury/premium version
of "public transit"

~~~
npunt
The only reason busses are the size they are is the labor cost of the driver
only makes sense with many, many passengers. When that is eliminated, the
equation changes.

Even if these weren't point-to-point, smaller vehicles can a) serve more
routes that would otherwise be below breakeven for minimum passengers served
by a bus, b) be more comfortable for passengers to enter/exit, and c) take up
less room on streets. Buses barely fit on streets, they only make sense on
very dense thoroughfares as an alternative to rail.

~~~
tomjakubowski
> c) take up less room on streets.

Not on a per-passenger basis, which is the metric that matters more in streets
full of people traveling.

~~~
npunt
I appreciate that argument and in some/many situations it is likely true, but
in others it is not.

What matters isn't people per square foot, it's throughput. And the larger the
vehicle, the more likely:

a) people are to want to stop at each stop,

b) multiple people are to get on and off at each stop,

c) the less likely it is to be full, and

d) the more awkward and slow it is in maneuvering on streets.

A/B/D all delay every other passenger, and make 3 mile trips take half an hour
through a city.

Cruise Origin isn't the only autonomous bus. The great thing about autonomy is
that it allows us more degrees of freedom to optimize transportation needs
including offering a variety of shapes and sizes and densities, while removing
the labor cost and the physical space cost of a driver.

You can just as easily design an autonomous bus to have density to match a
larger bus while retaining the footprint of smaller vehicles, which improves
all of the above issues with larger busses.

~~~
jonstewart
Bus dwell time plays a nonzero role in bus performance, but many multilane
urban streets are choked with cars during rush hour. It’s often the case that
congestion accounts for the lions share of bus transit time, yet there are
typically more people on the bus than in all the cars on a given block.
Creating a dedicated bus lane can dramatically improve bus performance, and
has a follow-on effect that since congestion has been mitigated, the same set
of buses (a fixed capital cost) can, in the same timeframe (fixed operating
cost), make more circuit trips. So not only does a single trip get much
faster, a bus lane magically produces more capacity.

~~~
kbenson
The Origin looks van sized, which is perfect. It doesn't take up significantly
more space than a car while moving or stationary but can carry more people
(and more importantly for congestion, likely _will_ much of the time).
Averaging three people per car/van sized vehicle would likely solve the vast
majority of current congestion needs, as it would likely halve the vehicles on
the road.

~~~
Animats
_The Origin looks van sized, which is perfect._

Remember Supershuttle? They had vans. "Never more than 3 stops". Remember the
long, long indirect routes of Supershuttle? Remember what happened to
Supershuttle?

~~~
npunt
On the other hand, Lyft Line and Uber Pool seem quite efficient.

Supershuttle was concentrated pickup but distributed dropoff, whereas with
network effects leading to more vehicles & considerably more efficient
routing, you can even that equation out a bit more.

~~~
kbenson
I was thinking along the lines of alternating between a distributed pickup and
concentrated drop off and concentrated pickup and distributed drop off. That
is, you use these for last mile travel at either end of a commute artery.

Given there are many different bus/rail stops along a route (and many routes
for buses), there's a relatively small geographic area to pick up in and drop
of to when the other side of the trip is bus/rail. So you might have an
automated van drive through an area and make a quick 4-6 pickups in a few
block area, drive to a bus stop or rail station, drop those people off, and
pick up 4-8 people for drop-off in close geographic proximity. Rinse and
repeat.

The point doesn't have to be that they solve the last mile by _replacing_
current mass transit, but by supplementing it in a way that allows for people
that were far enough away that it was hard to use previously now have an easy
and cheap way to do so, because you've expanded the coverage area of mass
transit stations.

------
abeppu
> With the Origin’s ability to drive day and night and last for more than a
> million miles, we’ll be able to cut up to $5,000 in transportation costs per
> San Francisco household, per year.

What counts as a transportation cost? Do average San Franciscan households
have $5k of local (i.e. replaceable with a robocab) transportation costs?
We're one of the US cities with the most households without vehicles [1].

But even looking at the US average, $5K would be a big promise.

E.g. a quick search finds claims [2] that average US households are paying
$250 in gas per month (-> 3k per year). That same source says the household
average for transportation (including planes, trains, ships, vacations) is
$9k.

For comparison, an SF muni pass with bart within the city is $98/month.

[1] [https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-
of-...](https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-
by-city-map.html)

[2] [https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-
budget#transp...](https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-
budget#transportation)

~~~
ncallaway
> that average US households are paying $250 in gas per month

Gas is definitely not the only expense to driving. Amortization of the vehicle
value, insurance, and maintenance are all costs that you have to consider as
part of vehicle ownership (or leasing).

If Origin were the difference between someone owning and not owning a car, it
would be pretty easy to get to $5k. As you noted, $3k per year for gas.
Another $1k for vehicle insurance. Another $1-2k for the value of the vehicle.

~~~
MandieD
Calculated cost of purchasing and operating a used Ford Focus wagon for 7
years and 124600km, minus what I sold it for when it looked like it needed a
new transmission: 36k EUR, or 0.29 EUR/km. Given Germany's allowed tax
deduction of 0.30 EUR/km for long commutes or charity work, this was a
relatively inexpensive car to operate. I could have optimized even more by
dropping my high-deductible comprehensive/collision down to liability-only
after the first two years. Despite Germany's really high fuel taxes, fuel was
only 27% of the cost.

Details: [https://mandie.net/2018/11/08/good-news-my-cars-
transmission...](https://mandie.net/2018/11/08/good-news-my-cars-transmission-
is-failing/)

~~~
ncallaway
That's awesome! Thanks for the link.

I've been meaning to track my actual TCO for a vehicle, but I've always been
too lazy. Appreciate you sharing.

~~~
MandieD
Many thanks are due to my husband, who first started me thinking that way
about cars when I was selecting this one, mapping out the estimated running
costs of various used cars I was willing to consider, and then getting me into
the habit of writing down the mileage for each tank.

Writing down the average liters/100km the car displayed for each tank gave me
a good general feel for how much fuel it really used for various situations.
Driving 220 km/h to Frankfurt for an emergency flight home? 14 l/100km (do NOT
recommend, but hey, I got on that plane and had that last week with my mom).
Normal Autobahn speeds down from the Austrian Alps? 5 l/100km. Speed or Stau
(traffic jam) Autobahn traffic that's the usual situation in Germany and
helped convince me that I really do prefer German trains, despite some
schedule problems? 6.5 l/100km.

------
tomc1985
I got to ride on one of Lyft's self-driving taxis during last year's AWS
conference.

If Lyft (and most of the other commentary on self-driving cars) is an accurate
picture of the current state-of-the-art, then let's just say the tech has a
long way to go before its ready for the kind of everyday use that we're being
hyped up for.

~~~
pb7
I didn't think Lyft was even on the radar in terms of self-driving
capabilities. Cruise is one of the top players and Waymo is _still_ years
ahead.

~~~
ummonk
Is Waymo really years ahead of Cruise? Given the different environments
they're testing in, I'm not sure it's clearcut to compare how well the two are
doing relatively.

~~~
pb7
Hard to tell but in 2018, Google had 3x the driving miles and less than half
the disengagements per mile than Cruise did.[0]

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/13/18223356/california-
dmv-s...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/13/18223356/california-dmv-self-
driving-car-disengagement-report-2018)

~~~
ummonk
It is hard to say how similar different companies are when deciding what
counts as a disengagement that needs reporting, but if the headline numbers
are accurate, having twice as many disengagements per mile is extremely
impressive; the SF environment is far more than twice as hard to drive in as
suburban / highway environments.

Also, Cruise’s disengagement rates are already ahead of what Waymo averaged in
2018:
[https://miro.medium.com/max/1644/0*lYhqv0Bd82ocQP5T](https://miro.medium.com/max/1644/0*lYhqv0Bd82ocQP5T)

Waymo disengagement rates were halved in 2018 though so they might be
continuing to exhibit substantial improvements as well.

------
symplee
The big concern is human drivers hitting it. Like the Las Vegas autonomous car
that was backed into by a truck within the first hour of going live. [0] For
example, does it have a side impact safety rating?

I also noticed on their technology page [1] they say that they have "Deep
Resources"

>> We have raised $7.25 billion in committed capital from General Motors,
Honda, SoftBank, T. Rowe Price, and others. These investments help shave years
off of our timeline to launch all-electric, self-driving vehicles at scale.

$7.25 Billion?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pV4vxD1bs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pV4vxD1bs)

[https://www.getcruise.com/technology](https://www.getcruise.com/technology)

------
habosa
I would love for this to exist but don't really trust Cruise to get there. I
see their cars around SF every day and almost always see someone with hands on
the wheel. And one time I ran into one in self driving mode in an area with
construction it was driving really erratically and scared me (biking).

~~~
dilyevsky
Yes the safety driver must have their hands on the wheel at all times for -
you guessed it - safety. Doesn’t mean car is not driving autonomously.

------
pgodzin
So is this a concept car? Has it been built or launched anywhere? Unclear what
this announcement actually is.

~~~
troymc
They say it's not a concept car; their intent is to put it in production. They
need to get some approvals and exemptions first.

Edit: More details in this video from The Verge:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3E7p4S_1m4)

------
streetcat1
The car has a pretty easy acceptance test:

1) Board the CEO and the CTO (with their families)

2) Drive from downtown LA to Lax.

Until than...

------
probablypat
This mode of transport is very similar to how people ride Jeepney's in my
country, the Philippines. I didn't see anything on how it would pick the
routes, but I can tell you that it can get pretty smelly in there without
windows.

Jeepneys are great though, I hope this mode of transport catches on.

~~~
r_klancer
Which reminds me of this article - [https://medium.com/swlh/self-driving-cars-
should-be-tuk-tuks...](https://medium.com/swlh/self-driving-cars-should-be-
tuk-tuks-2ed22edabd70)

Which reminds me that one concern with the Cruise vehicle is that,
understandably, it looks as if it's heavy and built to US passenger car safety
standards.

Whereas a tuk-tuk or jeepney designed exclusively for slower speed urban
travel could be built sub-500kg which would be better for pedestrian safety
and energy efficiency.

(Of course, especially in the US market, there are other factors that go into
consideration, such as the perceived or real need to travel in 30+ mph mixed
traffic, the need for large batteries that allow a high utilization factor
between charges, etc.)

------
pottertheotter
I can't quite tell, but do the front seats face backwards? I for one would
never be able to use those seats. I'd get carsick in no time.

------
groodt
Reminds me of Zoox [https://zoox.com/](https://zoox.com/)

~~~
jxramos
How so? What overlaps do you see? Anything significantly different?

------
rasengan0
$7.25 Billion -
[https://www.getcruise.com/leadership](https://www.getcruise.com/leadership)

Yep, same GM, now add Honda and Son-sama and we're ready for act 2:
[https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4](https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4)

Just in time for global warming

Anecdotally, Cruise has been cruising around the city for years like they're
helping rebuild Apple Maps or something.

Now we know, hard to miss the big launch, getting out of the 47 Van Ness and
seeing the usual special event at SVN West.

How ironic it was at the old Honda dealership and less than 1/2 block away
from the homeless navigation center.

Seeing as homeless folk ride free in MUNI, I have to wonder will they get to
cruise in Origin, too? Maybe good Breed PR gesture.

Probably not. Wrong use case.

If they crash and burn hopefully the IP will be worth something. Otherwise
seppuku time.

All the data from tooling around the city has got to be worth something.

------
microdrum
Awesome product that does not exist.

~~~
Koshkin
Come on, it’s just the first month of the new decade.

------
smaili
Medium post that goes with this: [https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-
story-b6e9ad4b47...](https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-
story-b6e9ad4b47e5)

------
amelius
The fact that it looks symmetric could be confusing to other traffic. You
can't tell which side is front, and thus where it is (most probably) going.

~~~
aembleton
Just put some lights on it. White at the front, red on the back

------
whytheam
So, they made a bus?

~~~
jiofih
Yeah, an autonomous, dynamically routed minibus that might significantly
extend the reach and lower the cost of public transport. Not good enough for
you?

~~~
oldgradstudent
Except that they don't actually have a working self driving technology to
power it.

------
keyle
Incredible tech from the videos through the technology page and the medium
post :O

Their UI looks incredibly sexy [https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-
myth-1b5cbdf8e23...](https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-
myth-1b5cbdf8e239)

Also the quality of their simulator, I've never seen anything like this in
production.

~~~
janpaul123
> Their UI looks incredibly sexy

Are you talking about the GIFs in that article? I work on that tool, and just
in case you're interested, it's open source, so you can play with it yourself:
[https://webviz.io](https://webviz.io) :)

~~~
keyle
Nice work!

------
habosa
I hope they sell this to cities. We would seriously regret the privatization
of public transit.

~~~
quickthrower2
What if multiple competing companies run fleets? Like taxi companies. No one
player to rort all the riders?

~~~
michaelt
Last time I visited a city with multiple competing bus companies, each had
their own return tickets and annual passes that only work on their busses. I
naively brought a return ticket for the _green_ bus company from the train
station, and when it came time to return that meant I couldn't get the _black_
bus or the _pink_ bus that came to the stop before the next green bus.

Needless to say, if each bus company runs two busses an hour, such a system
changes a one-bus-every-ten-minutes route into a one-bus-every-thirty-minutes
if two thirds of the busses won't accept your ticket.

------
react_burger38
I guess my question is - how would I use this with 3 kids, wife and car seats?
I only have 2 kids now but hoping for a third sooner or later. I guess I would
go in the category of “people who couldn’t use this on the daily”.

------
pgt
Why didn't they call it The Cruise Destination? Always think past the sale.

------
kspe
Am I the only one noticing an outstanding resemblance to cars from Detroit:
Become Human game? Wonder if its design was inspired somehow by it.

------
paxys
Does anyone else just see a blank page? I'm assuming there is supposed to be a
hero image?

~~~
sp332
On mobile the top image never loaded for me, but scrolling down worked.

------
ilaksh
Do they have an estimated launch date?

------
jcims
What’s the ‘club’ going to be called?

------
mcguire
So, it's a bus?

------
asdf21
Manufactured by Tesla®

------
aabhay
My money’s betting that there’s a remote driver sitting at a desk in Asia who
is commanding this. Driverless, sure, but not autonomous.

~~~
Nition
Has anyone done this successfully so far? I would have thought that the round
trip time for the video feed + returning inputs would be prohibitive. I've
done a similar thing with vehicles in videogames, and anything over around
150ms was pretty much undriveable.

~~~
aabhay
You can have low level autonomy features but high level overrides and route
planning by a person, including protected rights, jaywalkers, and some
emergency manual driving for construction zones, etc.

------
october_sky
Not a single job role open for security. Hope they've solved the adversarial
attacks against ML before these hit the road. The rendered images look great
though!

~~~
ejcx
This is probably the last thing to knock Cruise on. They've hired a lot, a
lot, a lot of good people on the security front

