Well folks, we did it. I have been waiting for this day for almost 10 years.
I am proud to announce @Cruise is now running 24/7 across all of San Francisco!
This is a pivotal moment for our business.
Let me tell you why 👇(1/6)
Operating robotaxis in SF has become a litmus test for business viability. If it can work here, there’s little doubt it can work just about everywhere. (2/6)
You’ll soon see us open up full operations in other cities. The capabilities and machine learning systems we’ve built to handle things in SF have proven themselves in many other cities around the world. (3/6)
These systems are also the same ones that power the @Cruise Origin, which is just around the corner. (4/6)
As part of our measured and data-driven approach to expansion, and in accordance with our rigorous safety policies, we will be rolling this out in stages. (5/6)
There are many challenges ahead for @Cruise, but this is worth celebrating. For us, but also for those who will benefit for generations to come.
Thank you to all current and former Cruisers, our partners at @GM, and everyone who has supported us on our journey so far. (6/6)
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We promised we’d go driverless in 3 cities by the end of this year, and WE DID IT! @Cruise is now live in SF, Austin, and Phoenix.
Folks, we are entering the golden years of AV expansion.
More about this launch:
In both Phoenix and Austin we completed our first paid rides for members of the public. Just like in SF, we’ve started with a small service area and will expand gradually. But since we’ve already done this in SF it will happen much faster in these new cities.
In particular, I’m proud of the team for building out a repeatable playbook for expansion. In Austin, we went from zero infrastructure (no maps, charging facilities, test vehicles, etc.) to fully functional driverless ride hail service in about 90 days.
Some fun news: I have formally accepted the CEO job at @Cruise once again.
I have no doubt it will be a difficult challenge given our very ambitious plans, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything more important or more fun. I’m never going to have trouble getting out of bed.
Thank you to @mtbarra and the @Cruise board for this amazing opportunity.
1) I’m proud to announce that @Cruise is ready to welcome members of the public into our fully driverless vehicles.
Our first few riders certainly had a good time, and we hope you do too.
2) You can read more about this here, including the additional $1.35 billion investment that the SoftBank Vision Fund is making in Cruise as part of this important milestone.
3) If you're in SF and want to go for a ride, sign up on our website using this link. Space is limited early on so lock in your spot on the waiting list now!
1) Monday night was a night I’ll never forget. I’m still speechless. I got to take the first ride, by anyone, ever, in a *driverless* robotaxi on the streets of San Francisco.
This was officially ride #1 for @Cruise. Full story and vids below.
2) Around 11pm Monday night we launched an AV without anyone inside for the first time. Until now we've been testing with humans in the driver's or passenger's seat, so this was a first. It began to roam around the city, waiting for a ride request.
3) At 11:20pm I used the Cruise app and summoned my first ride. After a few minutes, one of the Cruise AVs (named Sourdough) drove up to me and pulled over. Nobody was inside the car.
1/ Today @Cruise announced over $2 billion of new funding from Microsoft, GM, Honda, and some great institutional investors.
The vanity metric: $30 billion post-money valuation
The real metric: 0 million customers
Wait… what?
2/ Food. Energy. Real Estate. Transportation. The handful of true multi-trillion dollar markets and the building blocks of human life. Substantial change here requires - at minimum - the proverbial “10x better” product. That is a hard thing to build.
3/ Cars are driven by humans. Humans improved safety by ~2x in ~50x years. We suck. Robots are likely to improve this by 100x or more in 3-5 years. That is a big deal. Car accidents are the #1 killer of teenagers in the US, a very uncomfortable fact.
1/ Interesting thing happening in the LIDAR industry right now. 5+ companies will soon or have SPAC'd. Their value is based on *projected* revenue that comes from *entirely overlapping* potential customers, with very little discount applied to future projections. Is this bad?
2/ And how did we end up here? SPACs aren't subject to the same effective restrictions on future revenue projections as traditional IPOs. It's totally possible the numbers will be correct for one of these companies. But it's not possible for all to be correct.
3/ SPACs may be a good thing for pre-revenue companies or companies that have chosen to go public before they meet the more customary milestones for an IPO ($100m in ARR, for example).