Exclusive look at Cruise’s first fully driverless car

 Hey, it's Andy with TheVerge, and we just got our first exclusive look at the new autonomous vehicle from Cruise,they call it the Origin. It really didn't look likeany car I've ever seen before and that's really kind ofthe first impression you get as soon as you approach this vehicle. The outside of it has the same dimensions as a normal crossover SUV, but that's really kind ofwhere the similarities end. (bass music) So when you wanna get in to the vehicle, you first have to putin a code on its keypad, that's on the door on the outside, and it sort of opens as if, like, it's a minivan that opens from both sides. You get in and you have a very spacious interior of the vehicle, and that's obvious becausethere's no steering wheel, there's no pedals, there's no gear shaft, there's not even really a dashboard or any infotainment system. There's just two benchseats facing each other and this sort of vastspace in between them. - It's designed to becomfortable if it's shared, but if it's just you yougot so much space in here, you can really like, stretchout, and it's pretty great. And so I think it's a good experience, whether it's just you ora lot of other people. - You can do yoga in here probably. - Absolutely you can do yoga. Well, as long as your seatbelt's on, I don't know how that works. - Now you may have heard of some other self driving operators like Waymo, which used to be part of Google, and Argo which is backedby Ford and Volkswagen. Cruise is tied very closelyto GM, General Motors, which is the largest automanufacturer in the US. Cruise has 160 self driving test vehicles that are Chevy Volts, electric vehicles, here in San Francisco, where they hope toeventually launch a fully driverless robo taxi service. But more importantly, they'veraised about seven billion dollars in venturecapital cash over the last couple of years, whichis really just like, a staggering amount of moneyfor a self driving car company.


 Especially when you considerthat they haven't even scaled a commercial product yet. Now about two point seven billion of that is coming from the otherbig auto manufacturer in Cruise's corner, and that's Honda. This doesn't look like anyother car in the road today, and that's because Cruise says it wants to move beyond the car, arguing that many of theproblems that we have today could be traced to singleoccupancy vehicles. - Well there's some things about removing the driver, and thesteering wheel, and the pedal, that eliminates some complexityand cost in the vehicle. But as you can see here, theway vehicles are designed, normally they have a hood inthe front where the engine is, and some storage in the trunk. But when you don't need all that stuff, and you don't need thingsplaced where they are, we can have this enormous, spacious cabin without taking up anymore space on the road than a regular car would,which is kind of insane. It leads to a far greaterexperience for the rider, but then because we built this car around the idea of not having a driver, and specifically beingused in a ride share fleet, that kind of business, you know the vehicle is engineeredto last a million miles, and all the interiorcomponents are replaceable. The compute is replaceable,the sensors are replaceable, and what that does is itdrives the cost per mile down way low than you could ever reach. - Now Cruise insists that thisis not just a fancy concept, which is a really importantdistinction to make. Now we've seen dozensof radical car concepts over the years that havere-imagined interiors that look like fancyliving rooms or bedrooms.


 But none of those really have any chance of hitting the road anytime soon, if ever. Cruise says that this caris going into production. But it's gonna be tough getting there. Cruise needs a special exemptionfrom the federal government in order to mass produce vehicles without traditional human controls likesteering wheels and pedals. And the federal governmentonly grants about 2,500 exemptions a year. Now GM put in its request for an exemption back in 2018, but it hasn't gotten it yet, and it's unclear whenexactly this car is going to be approved to hit the road. Now Cruise has hit somebumps in the road before. Its plan to launch a robotaxi service in San Francisco before the end of 2019didn't really happen. It said the technologywasn't really ready yet. And Cruise has said itwanted to test its vehicles in New York City, but thatnever really went anywhere. Now I think it's safe to say that Cruise is feeling the heat from its competitors like Uber and Tesla, Waymo and Ford. Now the Google self driving car project recently started givingpeople rides in its self driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans, with no safety driver in the front seat, which is a pretty enormous leap. But the van still hassteering wheels and pedals. But removing the safetydriver is a pretty dramatic way of saying that thistechnology is here, it's ready, and it works. Cruise missed its chanceto be the first to launch a taxi service and it missed its chance to be the first to take safety drivers out of the front of the vehicle. But with this car, it has theopportunity to be the first to do something maybe even more radical, that's change the conversation,move beyond the car, and come up with an entirely different way of getting around. Now I know I said this wasn't a concept, but if you'd like concepts, check out the videos that we did at CES, there's a lot of really crazythings that we saw this year, check it out at YouTube.com/theverge. 

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