Cruise To Offer Free Robo-Taxi Rides In San Francisco For the Public -- Without Back-Up Drivers

Cruise, the driverless spin-off from General Motors, said on Tuesday that it's about to offer public robot-taxi rides in its San Francisco hometown soon -- "within weeks, not months." In a first for San Francisco, Cruise's public rides will be fully driverless, with no back-up driver behind the wheel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: It has been giving rides to its own employees sans backup driver since November, and has been test-driving truly driverless cars here since December 2020. Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has been providing rides to some San Franciscans since August. [...] Cruise is now accepting applications from members of the public who want to hop into Poppy, Tostada or another of its self-driving Chevy Bolts. The company said it will pick names from the wait list in "weeks not months." Meanwhile it is already giving rides to some locals who were nominated by Cruise employees. Cruise's rides for the public will run from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. and will be in the city's northwest quadrant -- including Nob Hill, the Fillmore, the Panhandle, the Sunset and the Richmond. For now, the rides from both services are free. Neither Cruise nor any other robot car company has permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to charge for rides, although Cruise applied for it in November.

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