Cruise Robotaxi Gets Stuck In The Middle Of An Intersection, Elon Musk Replies

Tesla’s CEO says Cruise’s navigation abilities are “extremely brittle to local conditions.”

Photo by: Twitter

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Jun 6, 2023 at 6:02am ET

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A driverless Chevrolet Bolt operated by GM’s Cruise robotaxi company was spotted stuck in the middle of an intersection that was under construction in San Francisco. But while this is far from the first time a Cruise autonomous taxi stopped in the middle of the road blocking traffic, it’s Elon Musk’s involvement that makes things a bit more interesting this time around.

The video embedded below was posted on Twitter a couple of days ago by the user Tesla Owners Silicon Valley and was later retweeted by @stevenmarkryan, who said that “Generalized autonomy (see Tesla) is 100x harder than the brittle ‘self-driving’ tech we see here.”

The post goes on to describe how Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving system “will scale widely because it is intelligent,” interpreting what it “sees” in real-time and acting accordingly. Just one minute later, Elon Musk jumped on the reply wagon and said: “Yeah, extremely brittle to local conditions & doesn’t scale.”

This isn’t the first time the outspoken CEO replied to random Twitter posts, but it’s the first time we can think of that he got involved with a video showing a stuck Cruise Chevy Bolt EV.

Yesterday, in another Twitter reply, Musk said that Tesla is happy to license its so-called Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver assistance systems to other automakers, in addition to opening up the Supercharger network and applying an open-source mentality for its technology patents.

As for GM’s Cruise robotaxi service, this isn’t the first time it got in trouble on the streets of San Francisco, where it operates driverless vehicles. In March, two Bolts got tangled up in downed wires and caution tape after a storm hit the city, and a few days later, another vehicle rear-ended a municipal bus.

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Last year, a Cruise self-driving vehicle was involved in an accident with a Toyota Prius that injured people in both cars, and in another instance, a driverless Chevy was stopped by the police because it was driving without its lights on during the evening, but there was nobody inside, which must have been fun.

As always, we’d like to know what you think about this, so scroll down to the comments section below to give us your thoughts.