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Kyle Vogt, the co-founder and CEO of Cruise, introduced immediately that Cruise automobiles shall be heading to Nashville. Nashville will turn out to be the seventh metropolis that the corporate has began operations in. 

Cruise’s journey began in San Francisco, and since then the corporate has deployed its robotaxis in Phoenix and Austin, and has began operations in Houston, Dallas, and Miami. In keeping with Vogt, we will anticipate to start out seeing Cruise robotaxis in Nashville inside the subsequent few months. 

A yr in the past, nonetheless, Cruise was solely working its robotaxi companies in San Francisco. Whereas it took the corporate 33 months to obtain all of the regulatory approval it wanted to start rides in San Francisco, in keeping with Vogt, for the corporate’s subsequent deployment places in Phoenix and Austin it took simply three weeks.

Since then, Cruise hasn’t slowed down its enlargement. In keeping with Vogt, this speedy development is feasible due to the corporate’s choice to start operations in San Francisco, a metropolis infamous for fog, steep hills, and heavy site visitors. As soon as Cruise’s robotaxis might deal with San Francisco, it might apply what it realized to just about any metropolis, though the corporate has but to deal with a metropolis the place it may well anticipate heavy snow. 

Due to all the AVs expertise driving, beginning operations in a brand new metropolis means figuring out areas the place the AV system doesn’t generalize effectively and fixing these, or just retraining Cruise’s current machine studying fashions utilizing knowledge from the brand new metropolis. Often, the corporate needed to redesign elements of a system to higher match the brand new metropolis. 

Cruise has even given its robotaxis the power to adapt to uncommon conditions, like these the place pedicabs, pedal taverns, and even donkeys are current, with out exhausting coding guidelines for every uncommon scenario. 

Whereas Cruise has had a lot success in rolling out its robotaxi companies, it hasn’t been with out challenges. Earlier this yr, the corporate issued a voluntary recall of 300 Cruise automobiles with the Nationwide Freeway Transportation Security Administration (NHTSA). The recall was in response to a minor collision the place a Cruise robotaxi hit the again of a San Francisco bus.

Cruise’s autonomous driving system can also be at the moment being investigated by NHTSA. In a submitting, NHSTA stated it was eager about two totally different points that had been reported to the administration that each end result within the robotaxis turning into hazards for others on the street.