Cruise unveils large, boxy new car with no steering wheel

Cruise, the San Francisco-based autonomous vehicle company, has unveiled a blockish new addition to the fleet of driverless cars that is already provoking mixed reactions from city residents.

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt introduced the new vehicle, which Cruise is calling the “WAV,” in a video posted to social media Thursday morning. The car has neither a steering wheel nor an obvious front and back, with the company’s stated goal being to maximize accessibility within the boxy interior. Vogt wrote in his post that the WAV is “the world’s first self-driving, wheelchair accessible vehicle.”

The WAV will begin closed-course testing in October, Vogt said, with hopes of rolling out a pilot program in 2024. 

The GM-owned ride-hailing company unveiled the new car with a coordinated announcement Thursday, which included Vogt’s video and a panel discussion held Thursday morning at Cruise’s offices in San Francisco. The discussion featured multiple Cruise and GM executives, as well as accessibility advocates, including Theo Braddy, the executive director of the National Council on Independent Living, Cruise said in a news release emailed to SFGATE.

Cruise’s standard Chevrolet Bolt-based cars, prevalent on San Francisco’s streets, don’t have a driver but still have human controls like a steering wheel and gas and brake pedals. The WAV appears primed to break that mold, and both Reuters and The Verge reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration may soon issue a decision on Cruise’s request to mass-produce cars without pedals for humans.

Cruise representative Hannah Lindow told SFGATE in an email that the firm intends to test multiple generations of the new vehicle but that the car is designed from the start to accommodate “as many wheelchair users as possible.” The first iteration includes an extending ramp and instruments for electric wheelchair users to secure their wheelchairs inside the cars, as shown in the clip shared by Vogt.

The announcement aligns with a central theme of Cruise’s corporate messaging: that autonomous vehicles could potentially provide accessibility to an underserved market of American riders. Cruise currently runs hundreds of driverless, wheelchair-inaccessible Chevy Bolt-based cars in San Francisco, though the firm had to cut its San Francisco fleet in half when the California Department of Motor Vehicles launched an investigation after a crash with a firetruck in mid-August.

Thursday’s announcement would seem to be a display of confidence from Cruise that federal and state agencies will give the green light to cars without human controls. An eventual rollout would start with “a pilot for a small group of users,” Lindow said, and is “pending necessary regulatory approval.” Cruise’s smaller cars have driven over a million miles in San Francisco, the company likes to say, but residents and officials remain skeptical of their safety, especially when it comes to responding to emergency situations.

Hear of anything happening at Cruise or another tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or on Signal at 628-204-5452.