--- title: "GM Told Cruise Employees It Was Shutting Down Via DM: Report" date: "2024-12-11" modified: "2024-12-11" authors: - name: "Ronan Glon" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/ronan-glon" url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/gm-told-cruise-employees-it-was-shutting-down-via-dm-report" categories: - "News" tags: - "autonomous car" - "autonomous driving" - "Cruise" - "Cruise Automation" - "General Motors" - "Robotaxis" --- # GM Told Cruise Employees It Was Shutting Down Via DM: Report ![General Motors Cruise self-driving car undergoing testing on the streets of the Mission District neighborhood of San Francisco, California, October 6, 2019.]() *\Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images\* It's been a long, bumpy road for Cruise, a [General Motors]()-run company tasked with taking on major players like [Waymo]() in the self-driving shuttle ring. The division is shutting down, and management reportedly shared the news with employees via workplace communication system Slack. Speaking to *[TechCrunch]()*, Cruise employees who asked to remain anonymous said they learned their days at the California-owned company were numbered after CEO Marc Whitten broke the news in a Slack messaging channel used for corporate announcements. Executives later called what's described as a short "all-hands" meeting to provide additional information, according to the website, but it sounds like details about what's next for the people who work at Cruise remain unclear. Employees said that they were "surprised" and "blindsided" by the announcement. For its part, GM [explained]() that it wants to "realign its autonomous driving strategy and prioritize development of advanced driver assistance systems on a path to fully autonomous personal vehicles." It supposedly intends to combine Cruise, which it owns about 90% of, with its various technical teams. Cruise's demise isn't surprising; the firm has gone from setback to setback in the past couple of years. California banned Cruise from testing its autonomous, [Chevrolet Bolt]()-based prototypes on public roads in October 2023 after officials [discovered]() that the company "withheld footage of one of its cars dragging away an injured pedestrian after they were knocked into its path during a hit-and-run." Other incidents involving Cruise cars were reported as well, including [traffic jams]() and fender-benders. Cruise remained allowed to test prototypes with human supervision. Kyle Vogt, one of Cruise's two founders and later its CEO, [left the company in November 2023]() after reports [claimed]() engineers knew that the prototypes struggled to detect children, yet management nonetheless chose to test them on public roads. Cruise was allowed to resume testing autonomous shuttles on California roads after [paying a $112,500 settlement]() in June 2024, and it [signed a multi-year partnership]() with Uber in October. These various setbacks cost a substantial amount of money. That might not be a huge problem if Cruise posted massive profits, but that's not the case. The robotaxis that we were told would take over the world continue to exist in a microcosm, and they'll be stuck there until regulations get looser and technology becomes both better and cheaper. All is not lost, though: GM says it will leverage some of the technology developed by Cruise to design a self-driving system that can be installed in a regular-production car (put another way: one you can buy rather than ride in). That's good news for many of Cruise's engineers, who might get to keep their jobs. Let's hope that the rest aren't handed more bad news via Slack. *Do you have details about what's going on at Cruise? Contact us at [tips@thedrive.com]()* ## Author Ronan is a contributing writer for The Drive. He draws on over 15 years of experience to cover breaking industry news, cool one-off builds, and anything in between. He began writing for The Drive in 2021 and stepped into his current role in 2024. His obsession with cars started when a relative gave him a Majorette die-cast shortly after his first birthday. It hasn't flickered since. Ronan lives in France; He swapped Utah's Rocky Mountains, where he grew up, for the Alps. He's an avid hiker, mountain biker, and musician. He also restores classic European cars and mopeds, including a 1978 Citroen 2CV that he's rebuilding from the ground up. ### Author social links [Twitter]()