News: Cruise Origin Self-Driving Shuttle Introduced

Driverless Vehicle To Form Basis of New GM Business

Clean Fleet Report was invited to General Motor’s Cruise autonomous-car division’s recent unveiling of the Origin, a self-driving shuttle vehicle.  Designed to be a Level 5 driverless autonomous vehicle, it will be the basis of GM Cruise’s ridesharing business.

The Origin has the wheelbase of a midsize vehicle and seats up to six passengers and luggage. Built on a new GM battery-electric “skateboard” platform, the Origin will also be the basis of other new GM BEVs that will be released starting in late 2021.  These BEVs include a new BEV Hummer truck and a Cadillac SUV, all to be built at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant after it goes through a $2.2 billion update to convert it to producing battery electric vehicles exclusively.

Additionally, in Ohio, GM’s Lordstown factory will be the site of a joint venture with LG Chem, which is putting in $2.3 billion into a manufacturing plant that will produce lithium-ion cells to power the Detroit-Hamtramck-built BEVs.

30 Million Miles Later

The Origin has been in development for several years with specially modified autonomous Chevy Bolts roaming the streets of San Francisco, where Cruise’s development center is.  These self-driving vehicles have been driven more than 30 million miles on the streets of San Francisco. Cruise says it will debut the Origin from the get-go as a fully autonomous, fully electric, ridesharing service that you hail with an app like Lyft or Uber, but with no driver.

The development of the Origin spanned over three years with the participation of General Motors, Cruise and Honda. Already in its third generation of development, the Origin has a projected life of a million miles with a modular design so that the rapidly advancing technology for an autonomous operation will not require the entire vehicle to be replaced, according to Cruise CEO Dan Ammann.  

Ammann said: “We’re on track to crack the superhuman threshold in urban environments and expect to be well past that threshold by the time the Cruise Origin enters production. We’re looking at safer roads on day one.”

Ammann believes that households using the Origin rather than driving themselves or using ridesharing could save up to $5,000 a year.

Cruise is keeping quiet when it comes to where and when the Origin will be released. They indicated that another, extensive test phase will begin shortly, with the shuttle tested on a private campus. Up to now, the Origin has been used exclusively on closed factory premises at GM and Honda. Detailed specifications about the Origin, including battery capacity, motor size, range, weight and wheelbase, were not revealed.

Two videos on the Origin:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/X3E7p4S_1m4

https://www.getcruise.com/origin