The latest entrant into the ridesharing world is Cruise, which has alpha-launched Cruise Anywhere, a self-driving ride-sharing service for their San Francisco employees.
The service is available to 10% of Cruise’s employees, and only within San Francisco, making the “Anywhere” portion of the title fairly aspirational.
Nonetheless, I remain impressed by the progress of Cruise, which GM bought for a reported $600MM-$1BB a year and a half ago. Often when big industrial behemoths purchase small Silicon Valley startups, the startup gets sucked into the corporate vortex, the employees flee, and in a few years there’s nothing left.
GM has managed to keep Cruise running like something approximating a startup, and Cruise keeps pushing the envelope, with what I believe are more fully autonomous miles driven than any other automotive manufacturer. If Cruise gets to the point where they are putting actual, non-employee passengers in the car, that will be yet another step forward.
Cruise also released a promotional video highlighting Cruise Anywhere. The best part? Cruise Anywhere is dog-friendly.
David Silver 