GM's Cruise fires 9 leaders amid ongoing self-driving investigation

General Motors subsidiary Cruise fired nine employees Wednesday as a result of its ongoing investigation into an Oct. 2 self-driving crash involving a pedestrian and the company’s subsequent actions.

The departures included a swath of senior leadership, including COO Gil West, chief legal officer Jeff Bleich and head of government affairs David Estrada, according to a source familiar with the dismissals.

Additionally, they included Prashanthi Raman, Cruise’s vice president of global government affairs, the source said.

The changes were addressed late Wednesday afternoon in a Slack message sent from new Cruise president Craig Glidden to the company’s staff.

"As a company, we are committed to full transparency and rebuilding trust, and operating at the highest standard when it comes to safety, integrity and accountability," he wrote in the message. "As a result, we believe new leadership is necessary to achieve these goals."

Both Glidden and Mo Elshenawy, Cruise’s other new president, signed the message.

The repercussions stem from a crash that occurred on the night of Oct. 2, when a Cruise robotaxi ran over a pedestrian who had been previously struck by a human-driven vehicle in San Francisco. The Cruise vehicle stopped atop the victim, then started moving again, dragging her an additional 20 feet, according to California Department of Motor Vehicles documents.

Cruise officials omitted and misrepresented key circumstances regarding the crash in subsequent meetings with state regulators, DMV officials alleged. The DMV indefinitely suspended Cruise’s driverless permits in late October, citing both technical problems and the alleged misrepresentations.

Some of Wednesday's departures were related to the misrepresentations and not the technical problems, the source said.

GM issued a statement late Wednesday that echoed Glidden's message.

"The personnel decisions made today are a necessary step for Cruise to move forward as it focuses on accountability, trust and transparency," a spokesperson for the automaker said. "GM remains committed to supporting Cruise in these efforts."

The departures are the latest upheaval in the aftermath of the crash. Cruise idled its national fleet of hundreds of cars. Co-founders Kyle Vogt and Daniel Kan resigned in November. General Motors later delayed plans for mass production of its signature Cruise Origin robotaxi until beyond 2024.

As recently as October, Cruise had trumpeted ambitious expansion plans and expectations of $50 billion in revenue by 2030. San Francisco was the first U.S. city in which it had started driverless commercial service, but it laid plans for a dozen more in short order, as well as international hubs in Dubai and Tokyo.

Cruise has since indicated it will concentrate its efforts on a single city once it regroups. It has not said which city will be home to its efforts, nor a timeframe for such a restart.