Cruise, the autonomous taxi service owned by GM, is working toward offering 24/7 service in San Francisco. I wrote about that here. And so it recently came out with some supportive data suggesting that between September and November of last year, it completed 2,800 rides covering some 27,000 miles, and that it did so without a major collision or injury.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, however, disagrees. They are opposing Cruise's service expansion plans, and have reported 92 incidents where Cruise's autonomous taxis have obstructed traffic, caused delays to transit, blocked lanes and, apparently in two cases, driven over firehoses.

These two things are not all that surprising. Firstly, autonomous vehicles are still in their infancy and they are known to do silly things. Part of this, I'm sure, is because they're programmed around road and life safety. And so if they don't know what to do, they're going to default to what is deemed safe, even if it means blocking a lane or obstructing traffic.

Secondly, transit agencies are suffering in our post-pandemic world. So this is an obvious and understandable case of self-interest. And it's not new. But at the same time, we've all seen this movie many times before, from Napster to Uber. Progress is disruptive. But does it really make sense to stop?

Cruise, which I wrote about earlier this year, has just announced that its autonomous taxi service will soon be available to the general public 24 hours a day, across all of San Francisco. Initially the service was only available between 11PM and 5AM (when traffic volumes are lower), and in certain parts of the city. It was also free to use. In total, the company now has about 300 AVs operating across San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix. And it has been charging for rides since June of this year.

If you're curious about what it's like to ride in one of these, check out the above video.

These are two short videos of autonomous Cruise vehicles driving around San Francisco. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, received a permit from the state of California to operate autonomous vehicles -- without a safety driver -- in September of last year. In November 2021, one of the cofounders of Cruise took the first ever driverless taxi ride in the company's history. And on February 1, 2022, Cruise announced that it was opening up to the public.

If you read the comments on Twitter you'll see that some people have found these vehicles to be hyper reactive to traffic lights and to do oddly long pauses at stop signs. So I guess they're not perfect. But oddly long pauses are certainly better than not stopping at all. Either way, this is a big deal. I'm not sure if these are the first unsupervised autonomous vehicles out in the wild, but they are easily some of the first.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about autonomy being a hugely tricky technical problem to solve. One that is perhaps more difficult than a lot of people thought it would be at the outset. I'm assuming that this is at least one of the reasons why ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft ended up selling off their AV divisions while searching for profitability.

But the market never gave up and it's pretty exciting to see this coming to fruition. Oliver Cameron is VP, Product at Cruise and the former CEO of Voyage (which was acquired by Cruise last year). If his tweets (above) are any indication, San Francisco is going to be seeing many more autonomous vehicles in the coming months.

This is going to have a profound impact on the unit economics for ride sharing companies like Uber, but more importantly it is likely to have a profound impact on our cities. Mobility innovations have a way of doing that. Some of the impacts might be negative, but I believe that many of the impacts can and will be positive.

As most of you will know, I am a believer in dense and walkable cities. I do not believe in planning cities around cars. And so that is not what I am advocating for here. My view is simply that I think autonomy grants us the ability to rethink our definition of a "vehicle." And maybe it becomes something that more closely resembles public transit. That could be a positive thing for our cities and something that draws people away from private vehicle ownership.

So I remain both optimistic and excited about what's to come.

Have any of you had a chance to ride in an autonomous vehicle? If so, leave a comment below or on Twitter.

Cruise, the autonomous taxi service owned by GM, is working toward offering 24/7 service in San Francisco. I wrote about that here. And so it recently came out with some supportive data suggesting that between September and November of last year, it completed 2,800 rides covering some 27,000 miles, and that it did so without a major collision or injury.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, however, disagrees. They are opposing Cruise's service expansion plans, and have reported 92 incidents where Cruise's autonomous taxis have obstructed traffic, caused delays to transit, blocked lanes and, apparently in two cases, driven over firehoses.

These two things are not all that surprising. Firstly, autonomous vehicles are still in their infancy and they are known to do silly things. Part of this, I'm sure, is because they're programmed around road and life safety. And so if they don't know what to do, they're going to default to what is deemed safe, even if it means blocking a lane or obstructing traffic.

Secondly, transit agencies are suffering in our post-pandemic world. So this is an obvious and understandable case of self-interest. And it's not new. But at the same time, we've all seen this movie many times before, from Napster to Uber. Progress is disruptive. But does it really make sense to stop?

Cruise, which I wrote about earlier this year, has just announced that its autonomous taxi service will soon be available to the general public 24 hours a day, across all of San Francisco. Initially the service was only available between 11PM and 5AM (when traffic volumes are lower), and in certain parts of the city. It was also free to use. In total, the company now has about 300 AVs operating across San Francisco, Austin, and Phoenix. And it has been charging for rides since June of this year.

If you're curious about what it's like to ride in one of these, check out the above video.

These are two short videos of autonomous Cruise vehicles driving around San Francisco. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, received a permit from the state of California to operate autonomous vehicles -- without a safety driver -- in September of last year. In November 2021, one of the cofounders of Cruise took the first ever driverless taxi ride in the company's history. And on February 1, 2022, Cruise announced that it was opening up to the public.

If you read the comments on Twitter you'll see that some people have found these vehicles to be hyper reactive to traffic lights and to do oddly long pauses at stop signs. So I guess they're not perfect. But oddly long pauses are certainly better than not stopping at all. Either way, this is a big deal. I'm not sure if these are the first unsupervised autonomous vehicles out in the wild, but they are easily some of the first.

There has been a lot of discussion over the last few years about autonomy being a hugely tricky technical problem to solve. One that is perhaps more difficult than a lot of people thought it would be at the outset. I'm assuming that this is at least one of the reasons why ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft ended up selling off their AV divisions while searching for profitability.

But the market never gave up and it's pretty exciting to see this coming to fruition. Oliver Cameron is VP, Product at Cruise and the former CEO of Voyage (which was acquired by Cruise last year). If his tweets (above) are any indication, San Francisco is going to be seeing many more autonomous vehicles in the coming months.

This is going to have a profound impact on the unit economics for ride sharing companies like Uber, but more importantly it is likely to have a profound impact on our cities. Mobility innovations have a way of doing that. Some of the impacts might be negative, but I believe that many of the impacts can and will be positive.

As most of you will know, I am a believer in dense and walkable cities. I do not believe in planning cities around cars. And so that is not what I am advocating for here. My view is simply that I think autonomy grants us the ability to rethink our definition of a "vehicle." And maybe it becomes something that more closely resembles public transit. That could be a positive thing for our cities and something that draws people away from private vehicle ownership.

So I remain both optimistic and excited about what's to come.

Have any of you had a chance to ride in an autonomous vehicle? If so, leave a comment below or on Twitter.