GM Robo-taxi Cruise's CEO Kyle Vogt Resigns

Kyle Vogt, CEO and Co-Founder of Cruise LLC, the autonomous vehicle company owned by General Motors, has resigned from his role amid an ongoing safety review of its U.S. fleet, reports said citing an email to the staff.

Following a pedestrian crash in San Francisco on October 2, the state of California had suspended the firm’s license to operate driverless cars. As of October 26, Cruise’s driverless operations remain paused in all markets.

Reuters quoted Vogt’s email as saying, “I have resigned from my position… As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating for what has happened. We need to double down on safety, transparency, and community engagement.”

Vogt, 38, who founded Cruise in 2013, had informed the board of his decision after apologizing to staff for the company’s problems.

Following the pedestrian crash, Cruise had to pull all its vehicles from testing in the country and grounded all its driverless operations to conduct a safety review. In early November, Cruise recalled 950 of its driverless cars across the US. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA, the collision detection subsystem of the Cruise’s automated driving systems software may respond improperly after a crash.

In a blog post last week, Cruise had stated that its Board took further steps to enhance safety and transparency. The board also named Craig Glidden, GM’s executive vice president of Legal and Policy and Cruise board member, to the role of chief administrative officer for Cruise.

Following the recent safety incidents, Cruise had said that it would hire a permanent Chief Safety Officer and retain a third-party safety expert in the coming weeks to perform a full assessment of Cruise’s safety operations and culture.

To conduct a technical root-cause analysis of the October 2 incident, Cruise previously hired an independent, third-party engineering consulting firm, Exponent.

Cruise recently said it would continue to operate its vehicles in closed-course training environments and maintain an active simulation program to stay focused on advancing AV technology.

The latest development happened, as Cruise was on ambitious plans to expand to more cities, offering fully autonomous taxi rides.

In mid-October, GM and Cruise announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Japanese auto major Honda Motor Co., Ltd. to form a joint venture to begin a driverless ride-hail service in Japan in early 2026.

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