WSJ News Exclusive | California Regulator Looking Into Anonymous Letter Alleging Cruise’s Robotaxi Service Wasn’t Ready for Launch

In the letter, a copy of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the person says that Cruise’s vehicles were regularly stalling at intersections and blocking lanes of traffic, and that employees had concerns internally about the readiness of the self-driving car company’s technology for commercial deployment.

The commission approved Cruise’s permit to launch a paid robotaxi service in San Francisco in early June, nearly two weeks after receiving the letter. Cruise shortly afterward began charging fares for rides in its driverless cars. At the time, Cruise said it was the first driverless-car operator to offer paid rides without a human driver in a major U.S. city.

A spokeswoman for the regulatory agency said such approval decisions are made based on records and information presented to the public utilities commission. She said it is common practice for the agency to look into claims it receives about a regulated entity.

“We look into the issue to determine validity and whether the entity is adhering to our rules and regulations and take additional regulatory action based on those findings,” she said.

In her response to questions from the Journal, the spokeswoman included a copy of the commission’s resolution in June granting Cruise’s permit to launch. In the 24-page document, the commission specifies that should unsafe behavior become evident, it has the authority to suspend or revoke an autonomous-vehicle permit at any time.

A Cruise spokesman said the company has a transparent relationship with regulators, speaks with them on a regular basis and strictly follows reporting requirements.

“Our safety record is tracked, reported, and published by multiple government agencies,” he said, in response to the concerns laid out in the letter. “We’re proud of it and it speaks for itself.”

The Journal hasn’t been able to independently verify the employment status of the letter’s author or the allegations raised by this person. Requests for comment sent to the email address listed on the letter weren’t returned.

In the letter, the person describes himself as a father and a Cruise employee for a number of years and asks that his comments remain private.

The letter also raises concerns about Cruise’s internal safety-reporting system, with the self-described employee citing one incident in which he filed a complaint that hadn’t been processed for six months.

The letter also claims that Cruise had regularly experienced incidents where vehicles stopped and were stranded individually or in clusters, blocking traffic. In some cases, the fallback systems designed to take control of the vehicle remotely failed, leaving Cruise employees unable to move the vehicles out of traffic until they were physically towed away, the person states in the letter.

“My subjective opinion from experiencing this and speaking with others at the company is that employees generally do not believe we are ready to launch to the public,” the letter writer states.

After years of testing its self-driving car technology, GM’s Cruise in June said it had received a permit to launch commercial services for its robotaxi fleet in San Francisco. The permit allows Cruise to operate in downtown San Francisco at night without a safety driver present, at a maximum speed of 30 miles an hour.

In late June, Cruise had trouble with cars clustering together at an intersection and blocking traffic—an incident that was similar to what was described in the May letter and was also captured on video and social media. Employees had to then manually retrieve some of the vehicles, a company spokesman said.

“While it was resolved and no passengers were impacted, we apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced,” the spokesman said of the incident.

Also in June, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration disclosed that it was investigating a crash that occurred that same month involving one of Cruise’s vehicles that didn’t have a driver at the wheel. The crash resulted in minor injuries, the agency said. A Cruise spokesman said it has been in touch with regulators about the incident.

GM has said it remains committed to developing its driverless-car business. The Detroit auto maker has said Cruise, which GM acquired in early 2016, could reap $50 billion in revenue by the end of the decade.

Write to Ryan Felton at [email protected]