Coming Soon to a Road Near You…

🤖🚖 Cruise, GM’s self-driving subsidiary, is offering free rides to the public in its fully-driverless taxi for the first time. The company is initially only accepting a “small number” of riders via a waitlist, but plans to expand the program as more cars become available.

• To anyone hoping for a test drive, two things: 1) The program is only live in San Francisco and 2) you should be prepared for unusual hours.
• A Cruise spokesperson told TechCrunch the service will initially only operate from 11 PM – 5 AM as part of the company’s strategy to “start where it can have the best impact and expand methodically from there.”
• The news came alongside an additional $1.35 billion in funding from SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which had previously committed the money to Cruise on top of its initial $900 million investment in 2018.

+Zoom out: In July, Ford and Lyft announced the debut of its self-driving taxis in Miami using tech from autonomous driving startup Argo AI. Months later, Intel subsidiary Mobileye revealed plans to start a similar commercial fleet in Germany this year.

Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo has been chauffeuring passengers in Phoenix since 2020, and recently announced expansions into San Francisco and NYC.

+Charge while you drive: The state of Michigan finalized a contract this week to build the US’ first wireless EV charging road system in Detroit, allowing cars to drive and charge at the same time.