Cruise is slowly but surely moving forward with its plans to make taxi, professional, and ridesharing drivers a thing of the past. The robotaxi service is getting ready to deploy its autonomous vehicles in two new cities. Here's how you could earn a decent wage by helping them.
The year 2023 marks a decade since Cruise was founded. Celebrating such an important milestone is better done through more work and new developments than parties. As such, the company's driverless all-electric vehicles will reach new urban areas, and you may be able to help. The cars will roam the streets of Miami, Florida, sometime soon because private testing and city mapping have already begun.
Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee, are the other places where Cruise's autonomous vehicles will try blending with the traffic. The latter, however, is the first location out of the three where the cars will arrive this year. Miami and Atlanta might be ready for driverless rides next year.
The company's CEO, Kyle Vogt, confirmed that Nashville will see its first batch of Cruise robotaxis "in a few months." The first rounds of testing begin on July 28.
Cruise is hiring Global Security Area Managers in the abovementioned cities if you're interested in joining the effort. This role pays between $103,400 and $152,000 a year. Actual compensation may vary depending on location, negotiated perks, bonuses, and other offers. Scroll down to find out the complete list of requirements if you're interested.
The GM-owned company is fully active at its San Francisco, California, home base. It allows its autonomous vehicles (AVs) to operate around the clock after California's DMV gave it the green light. Those using the service during the day are not charged. But not every regular customer can catch a ride. You have to be vetted first. More regulatory approvals are needed before Cruise's driverless cars can really start cruisin' by themselves.
At the end of last year, the company expanded its operations to Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. But the rides in these two cities remain limited to employees, their friends, and their families.
Photo: Cruise
Cruise is also present in Houston and Dallas. However, the driverless EVs are still supervised and bound to certain areas. Progress may seem slow, but the company's autonomous vehicles are learning fast.
Data collection occurs almost daily, accelerating the deployment of cars that do not need a driver. The sooner the system learns about the environment it must be active in, the sooner you'll see four-door vehicles on the road with no one behind the steering wheel.
The executive also explained that the expansion worked out rather well up to this point because San Francisco proved a very tricky environment for robotaxis to figure out how to navigate safely. Since they managed to make the autonomous vehicles work there, other places will only require some new mapping and code refinement.
"Our systems associate the visual appearance, radar signature, and shape of an object with how it moves or how the AV is expected to respond," added Vogt.
Cruise is also present through various partnerships in places like Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Tochigi, Japan.
Lastly, even if we don't hear often about these types of developments, it's important to remember that a lot of work is being done in the AV sector. Tesla's not-yet-ready Full Self-Driving (Beta) may be the most well-known out there, but companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox are the ones that threaten the existence of professional drivers.
Moreover, truckers face a similar fate because TuSimple, Kodiak, and Einride want to automate their jobs.
Tipping for a ride and awkwardly avoiding small talk might soon become history. It's a brave new world in the making, and we're witnessing it firsthand.
We’re headed to the Music City ????
Testing starts tomorrow in Nashville, with more cities to be announced soon! https://t.co/DE3OeEXLcJ
Car shows on TV and his father's Fiat Tempra may have been Florin's early influences, but nowadays he favors different things, like the power of an F-150 Raptor. He'll never be able to ignore the shape of a Ferrari though, especially a yellow one. Full profile
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