Vogt founded the company, sold it and returned to the helm. Here’s analysis of his fall and what’s ahead for Cruise
Cruise, General Motors’ robotaxi subsidiary, has announced the resignation of its founder/CEO, Kyle Vogt, in the wake of a serious road incident which led the California DMV to order Cruise’s vehicles off the road, and for Cruise to voluntarily stop service in other US locations. Mo Elshenawy, a current EVP of Engineering at Cruise, will take the role of President and CTO. Craig Glidden, who recently took a role as Chief Administrator at Cruise, will add President to his titles, making two men in the role of President. Some other management changes were announced in the blog post. This seems to have been an eventful weekend for CEOs of world-changing AI companies.
This caps a stunning month for Cruise and Vogt, who founded the company as a startup then sold it to GM. For a period, GM had appointed Dan Amman as CEO of Cruise, but he left in a conflict with Mary Barra, CEO of GM, over Cruise’s plans and IPO potential, and Vogt returned to the role (while continuing as CTO). Under Vogt’s returned leadership, Cruise underwent a rapid expansion, deploying live service to the public in multiple cities, and announcing several more that would go live soon. They also expanded service in San Francisco from evening-only to all day.
With the expanded service came a number of incidents, including traffic blockages from paralyzed cars, minor and moderate crashes, and interactions with emergency vehicles and scenes which raised the ire of the Fire Chief, the Muni transit agency and others in the city. A battle arose between the city and both Cruise and its competitor Waymo, but both companies seemed to be doing OK, because the city does not have jurisdiction over driving—that belongs to the state of California.
It all came to a head however during a serious incident which began when an unknown human hit-and-run driver hit a jaywalking pedestrian while driving in the lane next to a Cruise vehicle. The victim was bounced off the first car and into the lane in front of the Cruise, which could not avoid hitting her, though it tried to stop. That would have been unfortunate, but with no fault to Cruise, except for what happened next.
After stopping, the Cruise vehicle reportedly realized it had hit a pedestrian. However, it incorrectly concluded it had hit her on the side of the car, rather than having run her over with the front wheels. It was apparently unaware she was under the vehicle. It followed programming to clear the road and so attempted to pull over by driving forward 20 feet and slightly to the right. In doing so, it pulled the victim along and ended up with the rear tires resting on her leg. Emergency crews advised that the vehicle should not move off of her, and instead jacked the vehicle up to extract her and take her to hospital, where she remains. There have been minimal updates on her condition, though some suggestions are that she is improving slowly.
This, however, is not all (or even most) of what sunk Vogt and Cruise with the DMV. When Cruise offered reports on this incident to the press (including myself) and the DMV, they did not mention the dragging after the vehicle had stopped. The DMV states they were not shown the video of this dragging, though Cruise insists they were shown it multiple times. However, a written statement from Cruise to the DMV the morning after the crash omitted this very important detail. This was also the case in my discussions with Cruise—while I asked the video be stopped before the incident, I asked a number of questions that should have elicited information about the dragging, but did not. Other press reports describe a similar situation.
The DMV accused Cruise of being misleading, and so pulled their permit to operate in California. The California PUC automatically withdrew their permits to operate a taxi service. Cruise voluntarily stopped operation in other cities in the USA.
In the intervening period, a number of damaging leaks and revelations have come out of the company. Morale is reportedly extremely low, as can be seen by how frequently staff are leaking internal information.
GM paused production of Cruise’s custom vehicle, known as the Origin, which is key to their strategy. They put a hold on employee stock redemptions, though these have been partially restored. The letter to the DMV from Cruise’s senior counsel which omitted the dragging was disclosed, and more.Analysis
Cruise’s growth this year has been very rapid.
