GM Calls It Quits on Mary Barra’s $50 Billion Robotaxi Dream

-- General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra, clad in her signature leather jacket and masked up pandemic style, climbed into a Cruise robotaxi named Tostada for her first autonomous ride almost three years ago. Instead, Barra will merge Cruise into GM’s operations with more humble goals such as developing advanced safety systems for the vehicles it sells and, one day, offering autonomous driving as a feature on future models. “A robotaxi business is not GM’s core business.” While GM will still develop autonomous technology, it’s a big retrench for the company. Robotaxi Rivalry All told, GM invested more than $9 billion in Cruise and at one point rivaled Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo for robotaxi supremacy in San Francisco and other cities. Vogt criticized GM’s move to chloroform Cruise in a post Tuesday on the X social media platform, calling his former employer “a bunch of dummies.” Ending the robotaxi push brings GM right back to where it started in 1908 as a maker and seller of cars, scrapping its 21st Century dreams of tapping into new revenue streams by offering mobility as a service.