GM’s Cruise will expand robotaxi service to Phoenix and Austin

Cruise LLC, the self-driving car startup majority owned by General Motors, plans to expand its robotaxi business to Phoenix and Austin in the next three months with a target of adding $1 billion in revenue by 2025.

The autonomous-vehicle firm began charging fares in its ride-hailing business in June with a pilot in San Francisco. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the technology is performing well enough to justify the expansion.

“For the first time in eight years the technology for AV is no longer the bottleneck,” Vogt said Monday at a Goldman Sachs conference. “We’re in a position to grow and to do it very quickly.”

Cruise has a goal of growing its business to $50 billion in revenue by the end of the decade, making it a key piece of GM’s strategy to double its total sales to $280 billion by 2030. Cruise reported $51 million in sales in the first half of this year and an $868 million operating loss.

The surprise push comes after GM had to fix its software after an accident in San Francisco in June and also had about a dozen of its cars stop at an intersection in the city, hemming other vehicles in for almost two hours.