Cruise, the autonomous vehicle unit of General Motors, has announced an expansion of its robotaxi services in Texas. According to CEO and Co-founder at Cruise Kyle Vogt, the company plans to launch in Houston in the coming days, followed by Dallas “soon after.”
As with their previous expansions the service will first launch with rides for employees accompanied by a safety driver, before opening up to the public after sufficient testing. A timeline for when that might happen was not provided.
I am excited to announce @Cruise will go live in Houston and Dallas in the next few months!
Supervised autonomous driving will start in Houston in a few days, with Dallas to follow soon after.
— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) May 10, 2023
Cruise already has a presence in Texas, operating its robotaxis in Austin since last year. The company also operates in Arizona and California, where it has been charging fares for its self-driving taxi service in San Francisco since June last year.
Alongside its traditional robotaxis, which are Chevy Bolts outfitted with the necessary equipment to make it self-driving, Cruise will also soon be testing its purpose-built Origin robotaxi in Austin, according to comments made by Vogt during a speech at the SXSW event in March.
While the company is expanding to two new cities in Texas, Cruise is eyeing a much bigger expansion in California. Also in March the company submitted a request to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) seeking permission to test its autonomous vehicles throughout the state.
