GM announced today that it is snapping up Cruise Automation, a company that makes roof-mounted, aftermarket apparatus that can provide autonomous-driving capability to existing vehicles.
In a statement announcing the deal, GM said it was acquiring the three-year-old, San Francisco?based startup “to further escalate GM’s development of autonomous-vehicle technology.” GM also said it would be making additional investments in the company, which “will operate as an independent unit within the recently formed Autonomous Vehicle Development Team.”
Presumably, then, GM wants to tap Cruise Automation’s autonomous-driving smarts to speed the arrival of the technology in GM cars. (Cadillac’s semi-autonomous hands-free Super Cruise feature, which was to debut this year, is now set to arrive in 2017.) There’s no mention whether Cruise Automation will continue to pursue its aftermarket application?the market for such a device would be huge, although the technological challenges would seem to be even more daunting than at the OEM level. According to a report in Automotive News, the company’s current offering is a $10,000 roof-mounted device that can provide on-highway, autonomous-driving capability to some late-model Audis.
Autonomy’s Roadkill: The Path to Driverless Cars Will Be Strewn with the Carcasses of Big Industry
BMW Vision Next 100 Concept: The Ultimate Riding Machine
Possible GM/Google Hookup on Self-Driving Tech, ...