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GM-owned Cruise is getting ready to put its self-driving taxis back on the road, four months after one of its vehicles ran over a woman in San Francisco and dragged her 20 feet.
The driverless car company is reportedly looking to resume robotaxi testing "in the coming weeks," Bloomberg reports, and may begin operations in Houston or Dallas.
Cruise says it hasn't locked in a date just yet. "We have not set a timeline for deployment," a spokesperson tells Reuters. "Our goal is to relaunch in one city with manually driven vehicles and supervised testing as soon as possible once we have taken steps to rebuild trust with regulators and the public."
Cruise is meeting with various city officials to "gather information, share updates and rebuild trust," the rep said.
In response to PCMag's request for comment, a representative for Cruise dubbed the Bloomberg report "speculative" and reiterated the same statement it provided to Reuters. Cruise also tells PCMag that it hasn't yet determined the location for the relaunch.
Cruise first got approval to test its robotaxis in San Francisco in 2020; Phoenix and Austin followed in 2022. Last summer, California then gave Cruise (and rival Waymo) permission to offer driverless rides to passengers around-the-clock, as well as collect fares.
Things quickly went south for Cruise. About a dozen Cruise taxis suddenly shut down and blocked traffic outside a music festival due to "bandwidth constraints." A Cruise vehicle then hit a fire truck, leading the company to cut its San Francisco fleet in half. After the pedestrian incident, California's Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's permit to operate there, calling the cars "a risk to public safety."
Cruise CEO Koyle Vogt ultimately resigned after being at the company for more than a decade. Cruise SVP of Autonomous Vehicle Platforms Carl Jenkins then resigned last week, but did not state a reason for leaving the company in his LinkedIn post.
Cruise competitor Waymo has also run into issues and accidents of its own. Last year, a Waymo vehicle killed a dog. The company later recalled its entire fleet of autonomous vehicles after two Waymo cars hit a truck that was being towed.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include additional comment from Cruise.