General Motors backed driverless car company to begin testing in Las Vegas
Another driverless car company has announced it will start operations in Southern Nevada, with testing operations starting next week.
Cruise, a fully electric driverless car company that is backed by such investors as General Motors and Microsoft, announced it will begin to bring its cars to Clark County with the goal of its cars operating without drivers in the area in the future, according to a company news release.
Beginning next week, the San Francisco-based company will start the first phase of its Clark County operations, with its cars hitting the roadways with drivers behind the wheel to collect data before it deploys its driverless vehicles. The release states the cars will collect data in the cities of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson as well as throughout Clark County.
Next week we begin our manual data collection in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson and more across Clark County, NV.
More to come as we work towards going driverless in Southern Nevada.
— cruise (@Cruise) September 1, 2023
There isn’t a timeline on when Cruise could move forward with autonomous vehicles on Nevada roadways, Cruise spokeswoman Elizabeth Conway said.
Southern Nevada is just one of many new expansion areas for Cruise, the company has announced testing operations will also happen in nine other major markets across the country including San Diego, Washington D.C. and Nashville, Tennessee.
Conway said Cruise is pursing this expansion because it believes its technology can improve safety on roads and is focusing on urban areas where the company can have the “greatest impact.”
“As we continue toward our goal of delivering driverless tech to more people in more places, we are exposing our tech to as many diverse conditions as possible,” said Conway, in an emailed statement. “Similar to some of our other cities, we know there’s a large appetite for ride-hail with dense, downtown driving in many of the cities where we’re testing.”
The company currently has driverless operations in three markets, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, Texas. Cruise also plans to start driverless operations in Dallas and Houston in 2023, according to Conway.
Overall, the company estimates its driverless cars have driven more than 4 million miles on public roads.
Cruise will be another driverless car company to enter the market in Nevada as the state has a conducive regulatory environment for these companies to test out their technology. Driverless car company called Zoox has been operating driverless cars in Las Vegas since June.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.
