Cruise is looking to grow its fleet of autonomous vehicles beyond the confines of San Francisco and expand throughout California.
The self-driving technology company recently asked regulators in California to amend the existing permit that currently only allows them to conduct tests in certain areas of San Francisco. Cruise chief executive Kyle Vogt says the company is “ready to expand to essentially any city in the state”. Speaking with Auto News, Vogt said the state’s “warmer cities are, you know, on the table for us in the long term.”
If Cruise is granted permission to test in the most obvious choice of cities, Los Angeles, it will join competitors including Waymo and Motional that are already testing in the city. Cruise currently operates a fleet of around 150 vehicles in San Francisco.
It is not just California where the company is expanding its footprint. In December, it launched a limited service in Phoenix and Austin, Texas, and says these services will grow to become as big or bigger than the San Francisco operation.
“As we get closer to the end of the year, those are going to look like fully stood-up operations on par with, or potentially larger than, what we have in San Francisco today,” Vogt said. This rapid expansion may come due to the less-onerous regulatory environment in Texas.
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Cruise remains focused on city driving in the immediate future with Vogt noting that highway driving remains a work in progress. He added that highway driving features could come when Cruise is allowed to introduce its all-electric Origin, designed without a steering wheel and pedals.
The company requested an exemption from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for the Origin in February 2022 but the request is still being reviewed.
