Cruise’s CEO is resigning as the driverless carmaker wants to restore trust
Kyle Vogt, founder and CEO of Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors, resigned on Sunday, less than a month after Cruise suspended all autonomous operations following a series of traffic accidents.
The resignation marks a stunning decline in prominence for one of the tech industry’s most outspoken champions of self-driving cars. He leaves behind a company in deep crisis and an industry facing increasing scrutiny from the public and regulators.
Cruise has taken all its self-driving cars off the road after the license to operate them was suspended in California. As costs rise, the company is considering layoffs. And it is awaiting a report from an outside law firm on how it responded to an accident last month in which a cruise car dragged a woman twenty feet.
In light of these challenges, General Motors, that Cruise acquired for $1 billion in 2016, has taken a more active role in its subsidiary and is expected to deepen its involvement in Mr. Vogt’s absence. Instead of appointing a new CEO, GM named two presidents who will report to the board of directors: Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s executive vice president of engineering, and Craig Glidden, GM’s general counsel.
The turmoil at Cruise has raised concerns among driverless rivals that regulators could increase their enforcement and oversight of the industry, slowing Aurora’s expansion plans; Zoox, a division of Amazon; and Waymo, which operates robo-taxis in San Francisco largely without incident.
Mr. Vogt, 38, did not respond to requests for comment. In a message on
Mr. Vogt started Cruise a decade ago, promoting self-driving cars as a way to end car-related deaths while generating billions of dollars. But since last month’s crash, that future is in doubt.
General Motor CEO Mary Barra sent an email to Cruise employees on Sunday, thanking Mr. Vogt for “his great vision” and saying the board understood and respected his resignation.
“The board and I also want to let you know that we are intensely focused on setting Cruise up for long-term success,” she wrote. “Public trust is essential. As we work to rebuild that trust, safety, transparency and accountability will be our north stars.”
Cruise’s problems intensified over the summer as the company expanded its self-driving taxi fleet in San Francisco. Within a few months, ten cruise vehicles stopped functioning in the middle of a busy street. In a separate episode, a cruise car collided with a fire truck. Another vehicle struck wet concrete and became stuck.
But the most problematic episode occurred on October 2, when a cruise car towed the woman. A car had hit the woman at an intersection in San Francisco, throwing her into the path of one of Cruise’s self-driving taxis. The Cruise car ran over her, stopped briefly and then dragged her to the curb.
When the California Department of Motor Vehicles investigated the accident, it said Cruise had omitted footage of the woman being dragged from a video it provided to the agency. The DMV said Mr. Vogt was not among the three executives who attended a meeting about the accident.
On October 24, the DMV told Cruise to halt its self-driving car operations in the state. It said it had met with the self-driving car company about 50 times in 2023.
After the accident, Cruise said it had hired Quinn Emanuel, a law firm, to investigate the company’s response to the crash. It has also hired Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex software systems, to conduct a separate investigation into the crash.
The timing of Cruise’s suspension was unfortunate for Ms. Barra. She has spent years promoting its potential to benefit GM’s business. She co-chaired the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation business conference in San Francisco, which was attended by dignitaries from around the world, including President Biden. The event should have given her the opportunity to show off Cruise’s ability to transport people around town in Chevy Bolts without a driver. Instead, the cars were parked without drivers.
Mr Vogt has dreamed of building self-driving cars since his youth. He started Cruise after his first startup, a company that became Twitch, was bought by Amazon for $1 billion.
In his post on
“The startup I launched in my garage has provided more than 250,000 self-driving rides across cities, with each ride inspiring people with a taste of the future,” Mr. Vogt wrote.