General Motors’ Cruise division had been on the rocks after a tough couple of years. The Detroit automaker put the final nail in the Cruise coffin this week, however, as it announced layoffs of the division’s final 1,000 employees and said it would roll its technologies into its SuperCruise program.
GM purchased the remaining three percent of Cruise stock it did not own on Tuesday, giving it full control of the entity. The division’s employees were notified after the purchase yesterday, but upwards of 80 percent of the engineering and technical teams will keep their jobs. GM also cut a range of administrative roles but declined to share details on the move.
Cruise had pretty well-established technology, but GM CEO Mary Barra recently said the division’s operational challenges were too significant to overcome. The automaker had dropped billions on the autonomous vehicle program, but the predicted profits and revenues were never realized, costing GM around two billion dollars per year.
GM will now use Cruise tech in its Super Cruise feature, which is offered in several passenger vehicles. This feature allows hands-free driving on three-quarters of a million miles of limited-access highways and roads in North America. The automaker didn’t give specifics on how many people are working on the program, but it noted that California-based Cruise employees would remain in place.
[Images: Cruise, GM]
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