Episode 157 | Cruise: The Future is Here Now

Gil West, Chief Operating Officer, Cruise joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss how Cruise is scaling operations across the world. 

The conversation begins with Gil discussing GM’s revenue target for Cruise of $1 billion in revenue by 2025.

We are on target. – Gil West

Cruise is on target to hit their revenue goal because they are scaling. Currently Cruise has operations in 15 cities in 10 states. As Cruise scales, they are creating a flywheel effect that continuously improves their operations. 

We are creating a flywheel effect as we go to market and scale. – Gil West

The Cruise experience from city to city is consistent from a rider perspective. Behind this consistency is an operational playbook that is deployed in each new city that Cruise expands service. One of the key elements of this playbook is partnerships. When Cruise enters a new city, the company is focused on leveraging underutilized assets to ensure the most cost efficient operations. 

In San Francisco, Cruise is installing chargers at Oracle Park (Home of the San Francisco Giants) that the company will use when a baseball game is not taking place. When a game is taking place, fans will be able to use the chargers. 

When it comes to potential expansion cities, Cruise looks at the ODD (operation design domain) that fits the technologies capabilities, commercial opportunity in the market, market density, the availability of infrastructure and the regulatory environment. 

Our goal is to bring driverless tech to as many people as possible in many places as we can. – Gil West

As we have seen in San Francisco and Phoenix, overtime Cruise will expand their service area in new cities to eventually cover the entire city. As Cruise expands the amount of ride supply in a city, they are conscious about passenger pick-up wait times. 

Our goal here of course is to provide a consistently better experience and more accessibility at an affordable price point, and have people be able access the vehicles in a very timely manner. – Gil West

The experience that Cruise provides in the future is only going to be enhanced when the service becomes integrated into stadiums, concert venues and airports. No more waiting in line trying to catch an Uber or finding your driver. With autonomy and integrations, these headaches will become a thing of the past. 

As part of their vision for autonomy, Cruise designed and built the Cruise Origin in partnership with GM. The Origin is currently testing on public roads in San Francisco and Austin as the company prepares to deploy the vehicle for commercial operations pending NHTSA approval. 

We will be introducing the Origin commercially soon and then in multiple cities. – Gil West

Wrapping up the conversation, Gil shares his opinion on the future of Cruise which includes new vehicle form factors.

Chapters:

0:00 The Road to Autonomy Index

0:55 Introduction

1:17 Cruise $1 Billion 2025 Revenue Target Reaffirmed

2:45 Scaling Cruise and Maintaining the Experience

9:13 Expansion into New Cities

22:41 Pick-up Times

24:37 Future Cruise Experiences

29:54 Cruise Origin

35:53 Operating a Profitable Business

39:22 Future of Cruise

Recorded on Tuesday, September 12, 2023

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