Cruise announced today it has opened a public waitlist for customers to sign up and get a ride in one of their driverless taxis in San Francisco, California.
The company, which is backed by General Motors (GM) and Honda, announced the milestone on its website on Tuesday.
We’re opening a sign-up page on our site today so you can get a driverless ride soon — and free, for now! We’re starting with a small number of users and will ramp up as we make more cars available, so sign up now to lock in an early spot.
As noted by Cruise, the service will be free as the company has not yet received approval from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to accept fares from customers.
Cruise is currently only allowed to operate their Level 4 driverless vehicles in a limited area, only during the hours of 10:00pm and 6:00am, and only at a maximum speed of 30mph (48km/h).
With the milestone, Cruise has now gained access to an additional $1.35 billion in funding from the SoftBank Vision Fund.
The SoftBank Vision Fund initially invested $900 million in Cruise in 2018. They agreed to invest an additional $1.35 billion when we started operating fully driverless cars. I’m pleased to announce we’ve officially hit that milestone! This additional capital will help us expand our world-class team and quickly scale this technology across SF and into more communities.
If you are in San Francisco you can sign up here. Space is limited and is expected to fill up quickly.
As part of the announcement, Cruise released this video showing the reactions of some of the first testers.
