cruise automation founder

Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt resigns from GM-owned robotaxi unit

Cruise CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt has resigned from his role at the autonomous vehicle venture owned by  General Motors , according to a company statement sent to CNBC on Sunday.

Mo Elshenawy, who previously served as executive vice president of engineering at Cruise, will now serve as president and CTO for Cruise, the company said. 

Vogt confirmed his resignation Sunday night in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He did not give a reason for the resignation, and said he plans “to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas.”

The departing CEO also offered words of encouragement, writing: “Cruise is still just getting started, and I believe it has a great future ahead. The folks at Cruise are brilliant, driven, and resilient. They’re executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision. I’m thrilled to see what Cruise has in store next!”

Vogt’s resignation follows a string of missteps by Cruise.

As CNBC previously reported, the company issued a voluntary  recall affecting 950 of its robotaxis , and suspended all vehicle operations on public roads following a series of incidents that sparked criticism from first responders, labor activists and local elected officials, especially in San Francisco. 

In one serious incident in October, the human driver of another vehicle struck a pedestrian in San Francisco at night, tossing her into the path of a Cruise self-driving car, which then drove over and dragged her.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles  suspended  Cruise’s deployment and testing permits for its autonomous vehicles after that incident. “When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the regulators said in a statement at the time.

In orders of suspension the California DMV issued to Cruise, the regulators accused the company of failing to give a transparent account of what happened during the pedestrian collision.

Separately, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is  investigating  Cruise to determine whether its automated driving systems “exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway,” according to a filing on the agency’s  website .

GM purchased Cruise in 2016. It then brought on investors such as  Honda Motor , Softbank Vision Fund and, more recently,  Walmart  and  Microsoft . However, last year,  GM acquired SoftBank’s equity ownership stake  for $2.1 billion.

GM execs, including CEO and Chair Mary Barra, had hoped the startup would be ramping up a driverless transportation network this year, and hoped Cruise would play a notable role in doubling the company’s revenue by 2030.

In October 2021, GM said it expected “new businesses” such as Cruise and its BrightDrop  commercial EV business  to grow from $2 billion to $80 billion during that timeframe.

According to its most recent quarterly update,  GM has lost roughly $1.9 billion  on Cruise between January and September 2023, including $732 million in the third quarter alone.

Barra also serves as chair of the Cruise board of directors. Former Tesla and Lyft executive Jon McNeill, a member of GM’s board of directors since 2022, was appointed vice chairman of the self-driving unit’s board following Vogt’s resignation.

Alex Roy from transportation consultancy Johnson & Roy told CNBC, “Responsibility starts at the top. If Cruise is going to survive, and they have great technology there, the CEO had to go.”

“I suspect at least one more high level exec will have to resign — anyone who made the call to obfuscate or omit information in communication with the California DMV,” he said. “In my opinion, Cruise has been too slow in taking steps to rebuild trust with staff, regulators and the public. Executive departures are table stakes.”

Vogt’s resignation comes roughly two years after he was reappointed as CEO, following  an unexpected departure  by Dan Ammann, a former GM executive, in December 2021.

Ammann, a former investment banker, began leading Cruise in 2019 after serving as GM’s president and chief financial officer before that. He was credited with the 2016 acquisition of Cruise.

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Cruise founder Kyle Vogt on why he joined forces with GM

General Motors snapped up Silicon Valley-based Cruise Automation for more than $1 billion earlier this year with plans to plant its self-driving tech inside its own car brands.

It was a fine move for GM, which has been aligning itself with several automotive ventures over the past year — including a partnership with Lyft, acquiring assets from the now defunct rideshare competitor Sidecar and launching its own rideshare service Maven.

Cruise founder Kyle Vogt came onstage today at TechCrunch Disrupt to chat about the GM deal and his plans to become a key player in the automated driving space under the major car manufacturer.

“Ultimately what we want to achieve with self-driving cars is to deploy it at scale,” Vogt said. “You can’t do that by retrofitting cars one by one.”

GM and its many partnerships will help Cruise get there faster and cheaper, according to Vogt, who was careful to mention GM’s partnership with Lyft was key in getting the customers and infrastructure needed to get there.

But Vogt also doesn’t think we won’t truly see the benefit in automated driving until we remove humans altogether. “Humans are inherently erratic,” he said. “You don’t unlock the true potential until it’s truly self-driving, get the humans off the road.”

Cruise launched three years ago when driving sans-human seemed like something that would happen 20 years down the road. We’re not there yet, but truly self-driving cars are now much closer than we think, according to Vogt.

He’s particularly confident about his position in the space with the new resources from a bigger, more established company. Cruise is now working with Maven and Lyft and can place its technology within the 7 to 8 million connected vehicles in Chevy’s OnStar program, thanks to the GM deal.

GM is not the only vehicle manufacturer planting its flag in this technology. Ford, Audi, Toyota and pretty much every major U.S. vehicle maker seems to be making moves here. And a big hurdle now is finding the talent to help build these driving systems.

“But it’s a question of going with a company where your work will see the light of day,” Vogt pointed out.

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He also agreed the nanodegree Udacity announced yesterday at Disrupt that was created to help certify more engineers in building automated vehicles would be a good start, but they’ll need “a little more than that,” he said. “…like a background in computer engineering.”

But, as Vogt pointed out, GM has made some key moves that will help position them at the forefront of the autonomous driving market — adding that a big part of the self-driving future is in ridesharing.

Lyft, Uber and others stand to gain from an aging population of drivers who may not be able to continue driving themselves but still need to get around. Vogt says he is focused on safety and making transportation more accessible to these senior members and mentioned Lyft was going to play into those plans.

Vogt doesn’t think that means America’s love affair with car ownership is going away anytime soon. “They’ll co-exist for a while,” he said.

But will we see our first self-driving cars through Lyft? “We’ll have to wait and see,” Vogt said.

Driven in the Valley: The Startup Founders Fueling GM’s Future

Cruise Automation sold to GM for $1 billion; now its founders are racing to bring a self-driving car to the masses.

Statistically speaking, most of us will never build a billion-dollar company. We definitely won’t build two of them. If any of us did pull that off, we’d most likely feel pretty satisfied with ourselves. We’d retire. Travel the world, maybe. Do a TED Talk, definitely.

Most of us are not like Kyle Vogt, who at the age of 31 has already built two startups that sold for $1 billion. He and Daniel Kan, his cofounder and COO at Cruise Automation, have recently become the youngest senior directors at General Motors , a role most auto-industry lifers would have to toil for three decades to get a shot at. Vogt and Kan got there in just three years because Vogt built self-driving car software so compelling that GM had to have it. In May the country’s largest automaker shelled out $1 billion (including incentives for performance) for Cruise, a 40-person startup, before it even launched a product. And before Cruise, Vogt cofounded Justin.tv, a pioneering live-streaming business that eventually evolved into Twitch, a videogame-streaming site that was sold to Amazon for $970 million in 2014.

One of those accomplishments might be enough for a normal human being, but Vogt operates in Silicon Valley, the land of insatiable ambition. Success by normal standards wasn’t enough for Elon Musk or Steve Jobs or Larry Page. And it isn’t enough for Vogt, Kan, and the guys (yes, all guys) in their tight-knit crew of equally accomplished, equally young friends from Justin.tv. Vogt won’t feel like a success until Cruise fulfills its mission: making self-driving cars a reality. Not just a prototype or a few cars in a test market, but fully autonomous vehicles, out in the world, by the millions, in a way that increases access to transportation, reduces congestion and pollution, and, most important, saves lives. To put it in Silicon Valley–speak: He wants to make the world a better place.

Daniel Kan and Kyle Vogt are number 7 on our 2016 40 Under 40 list. See the full list here .

Sitting in a conference room at Cruise’s warehouse-style office in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, Kan, sporting the startup uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and hoodie, matches that Valley platitude with another. “I’ve always heard, ‘The first time you start a company, you want to get rich. The second time you start a company, you want to build a legacy.’ ”

“That’s going to be quoted,” Vogt warns from across the table. (Yep!) Vogt quickly clarifies that Cruise isn’t Kan’s first startup either. “It’s not the get-rich one.”

The startup game has made millionaires out of the people in Vogt and Kan’s network of friends and colleagues, but they’d never say they’re in it for the money. “Your startup should be what you want the first line in your Wikipedia entry to be,” says Michael Seibel, a Justin.tv cofounder who is now CEO of the famous startup accelerator program at Y Combinator (YC) . “It’s your life’s work.”

Vogt, a reserved, media-shy Midwesterner, does not have a Wikipedia page yet, but self-driving cars are clearly his life’s work. He’s been passionate about them since participating in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge as an undergrad at MIT. At Cruise’s office, he rattles off the ways self-driving cars will improve society, alongside auto fatality stats (35,000 deaths last year in the U.S.). Now, under the umbrella of GM, his tiny software company has a chance to vastly expand its impact.

But to cement his legacy, he must pull off an even rarer feat—a startup acquisition that actually works. Bright-burning startups tend to fizzle after selling to larger companies. Vogt and Kan must figure out how to navigate the politics and red tape of their new corporate overlord without losing any of the fast-moving startup DNA that made them so attractive to GM to begin with.

The stakes are higher than ever as Google , Apple , Uber, Tesla , Ford, and myriad startups sprint to bring the first self-driving car to market. The resources of a car-building leviathan that’s in dire need of software expertise could give Vogt and Kan the fuel they need to win that race—or weigh them down with baggage that turns them into an also-ran.

Kyle Vogt planned to spend the evening of March 18, 2007, putting the finishing touches on Justin.tv, the live-streaming video site he had cofounded. But at midnight, TechCrunch accidentally published a story announcing the site’s launch, nine hours before it was supposed to go up. An audience of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people flooded onto the not-yet-ready site, causing it to crash. Vogt, the company’s head of engineering, and Emmett Shear, its chief technology officer, “grinded through the night and for two more days,” scrambling to get their site to function properly, says Seibel, a third cofounder. Shear has no memory of the event beyond a photo of himself typing furiously on a laptop from his bed. “It’s all a giant blank spot,” he says. “I hear that happens sometimes with trauma.”

Justin.tv’s goal was to build the first network of live-streaming broadcasters. That sounds a lot less complicated now than it was in 2007, when iPhones were brand-new, bandwidth was expensive, and online video streaming was glitchy. To do what live-streamers can do today with a smartphone, the site’s early broadcasters had to wear elaborate backpacks and baseball hats rigged with camera systems designed by Vogt. Justin Kan, the site’s namesake (and older brother of Cruise’s Daniel Kan), was the site’s first “lifecaster,” capturing himself doing 23-year-old guy stuff: hanging out, wasting time, going to parties, meeting girls.

That chaotic, sleepless first 72 hours foreshadowed the entire seven years of Justin.tv’s existence. Startup life is prone to drama and dysfunction, but Justin.tv’s flailings were so uniquely turbulent that a Hollywood production company optioned the rights for a feature film about it.

There was the first monthly bandwidth bill for $20,000, double the startup’s cash in the bank. There was the time Seibel had to defend the company at a House Judiciary Committee hearing because users were sharing pirated sports content. The site crashed anytime the Jonas Brothers tried to go live. A teenager live-streamed his suicide. And most famously, in a prank by viewers, a SWAT team kicked down the door of the two-bedroom apartment where Justin.tv’s four founders lived and worked. (The North Beach apartment tower was known as the Y-Scraper because so many Y Combinator founders lived there.)

If Kan was Justin.tv’s star, Seibel was the business guy, Shear was the technical guy, and Vogt was the creative genius. (And for a summer, Daniel Kan was the intern.) Vogt became known for “hero coding” the company out of problems, Justin Kan says. “He’d just, like, lock himself in a room for three days and code away and then emerge with something that worked.”

No amount of hero coding could make Justin.tv into a viable business; 24-hour life­casting wasn’t compelling enough for a mass audience. But while most failed startups are quickly forgotten, Justin.tv’s legacy is traceable throughout the Valley. Young entrepreneurs revel in the mythology of the “Justin.tv mafia,” in part because Seibel and Justin Kan are now leaders at YC . As thirtysomething startup sages, they dispense advice from their time in the trenches to dozens of hopeful founders who come to YC for mentorship, introductions to investors and powerful alumni, and a small seed investment.

And unlike most of Silicon Valley’s graveyard of dead startups, Justin.tv produced a return for its investors. When the original site began to stumble, Seibel spun out Socialcam, a side project focused on short, Instagram-like videos, eventually selling it to software giant Autodesk in 2012 for $60 million. Meanwhile, Shear shifted the remaining team’s focus to videogames, one area of Justin.tv where traffic was booming. Branded Twitch.tv, the site quickly ballooned to 55 million users who spent an average of 20 hours a week watching other people play videogames. Twitch even turned a profit on ads and monthly subscriptions. In 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch for $970 million including incentives—10 times the company’s private market valuation at the time. YC has funded 10 companies that rose to billion-dollar valuations, including Airbnb and Dropbox , but Twitch and Cruise are its two largest exits to date—which just reinforces the Justin.tv mafia’s legacy.

So many of Justin.tv founders’ Y-Scraper pals became successful that Seibel once said to Justin Kan (in Kan’s words), “Man, we knew so many geniuses.” In reality, timing and grit played a bigger role than IQ. “We’re not like Mozart or something,” Kan says. “We were just in the right place at the right time and we didn’t give up.”

Nor did they dream small. Recently Kan’s cousin, a professor, asked him if he wanted to retire. After all, he’s Twitch-Rich. He told her, “I want to build a billion-dollar company. I want to build a $10 billion company.” The answer surprised his cousin. “I’ve never heard anyone say that,” she said. But though it often feels as if everyone in the Bay Area is swimming in startup cash, the money is beside the point. What matters is what the money symbolizes: Your outsize, possibly irrational ambitions. Kan repeats what I’ve heard from just about everyone in the Justin.tv crew: Every person is the average of their five closest friends. People come to Silicon Valley to be around ambition, he explains. Wanting to build a $10 billion company? Kan throws up his hands. “I’ve only heard people say that.”

The lesson from Justin.tv, according to the founders of Justin.tv, is don’t repeat the mistakes of Justin.tv. And yet, on March 24, 2014, Vogt found himself pulling another last-minute almost-all-nighter to save his new startup, Cruise Automation, from a total meltdown. This time it was literal—the polylactic acid parts he had 3D-printed for his prototype car had melted in the California sun after the first day of YC’s high-profile “demo day” event.

Demo days are like beauty pageants for startups, where founders use big numbers, snazzy pitch decks, and a healthy dollop of snake oil to coax seven-figure checks out of an audience of influential investors. Now Cruise’s star player—Vogt’s black Audi S4, rigged with sensors that enabled it to steer and brake on its own—was a dud. Vogt and his two engineers, Ian Rust and Rita Ciaravino, worked through the night reprinting the parts (they had to buy three new printers to get the job done in time) and rebuilding the prototype from scratch.

The next morning Vogt, looking just barely presentable, drove Justin Kan to day two of the event. For a few miles on Highway 101, Vogt let the car take over. Kan had already invested $25,000 in Cruise “because it’s Kyle,” he says; he immediately invested more. He couldn’t believe they had built a car that drives itself in just three months (and then again, overnight). “Kyle had basically hero coded it once again,” he says.

Cruise emerged from demo day with $4.3 million in convertible debt funding. At the time, Cruise planned to sell $10,000 kits that would retrofit any car to drive itself on highways, similar to Tesla’s autopilot feature today. Daniel Kan, who joined the company just after demo day to run operations, remembers thinking, “This might be one of the craziest things, but it will at least be a good story.” But not long after the demo day, the founders recognized a major roadblock: Cruise would need to customize its kits to accommodate hundreds of vehicle makes and models. In 2015, Cruise abandoned the kits to build software for fully autonomous vehicles.

By then, self-driving cars were feeling less like one of the craziest things. Google was showing off its fleet of jelly bean pod cars, Uber’s CEO predicted an end to human cabdrivers, and Detroit automakers were taking a closer look at the up-and-coming self-driving-car startups.

It’s common for large corporations to get friendly with potential competitors at vague “business development” meetings. Cruise used the meetings with Fortune 500 automakers and suppliers to set ambitious development targets for itself. Startups with no demanding customers can lose their urgency, with development cycles dragging on for years, says Rust, who worked at Google’s experimental research factory before joining Cruise. “We tried to accomplish what one of the most talented teams at Google did in two years and compress that into six months,” Vogt says.

One of the stalwarts, GM, was visiting so frequently that Cruise had to expand its city road testing beyond a single fixed route in San Francisco. “You do that once, and the next time GM comes back, you can’t demo that route again,” Rust says. “You don’t want them thinking, Does this car run on rails?”

“We used it as internal motivation,” Daniel Kan says. “If we impress them, there is potential opportunity; if we don’t, who cares?”

They impressed them. “Every time we went there they’d moved along another nine steps,” says Dan Ammann, president of GM. “We were super excited with what the guys there had achieved already technically, but also the caliber of the talent and speed of development.” In March, GM and Cruise announced the deal, which closed after Cruise settled a spat with an estranged cofounder.

The billion-dollar price tag alone makes the deal seem like a no-brainer for Cruise—but remember, this is the legacy startup, not the get-rich one. Vogt believes selling to GM will help Cruise fulfill its lifesaving mission faster. “If we truly want to do what brought us to work on autonomous vehicles in the first place, we need to do something that is going to achieve scale,” he says. “With GM we can build and deploy it at scale. We want to have the highest possible social impact.”

It’s become a cliché, when a startup sells to a large corporation, for the founders to spout hopeful phrases about “perfect alignment” and “inspiring commitments.” The company is the founders’ baby, and they’ve barely grasped the reality of letting it go. They take the team out for a big celebratory dinner as the congratulations pile up in their smartphone notifications. They take their first vacation in years. They tell themselves the commitments really are inspiring.

It’s also a startup cliché that within a year, the jig is up. The founders realize that the grinding, slogging, against-all-odds hero’s journey of cold calling and pitching and building and hustling and eating glass and staring into the abyss is finally over. Their metabolism doesn’t adapt well to the politics of slow-moving, risk-averse corporations. Once their life’s work begins to feel like a job, a switch goes off in their brains. Some leave to start their next company. Others “vest in peace.” Whatever innovative thing they built gets lost inside a giant corporate overlord. Startups have a 90% failure rate, according to studies. The failure rate for mergers and acquisitions—at least when it comes to meeting expectations—is just as high.

Already Vogt and Kan are being pulled into more tedious corporate meetings, where committees of executives are required to sign off on decisions and budgets that they’re used to handling themselves. It won’t be simple to combine Cruise, a three-year-old upstart that has yet to launch a product, with General Motors, a 108-year-old, 216,000-­person company that shipped 9.8 million vehicles last year to the tune of $152.4 billion. The stakes are high: GM can’t afford to fall behind as the auto industry transforms itself from the business of manufacturing and selling cars to the business of “mobility.”

Vogt and Kan do not intend to become clichés. While negotiating the deal, Vogt turned to his former cofounder, Emmett Shear, for advice. Twitch has thrived under Amazon’s ownership—doubling its users with very little executive turnover—­because it has maintained its independence, with Shear staying on as CEO of Twitch. “[Shear] made it clear to Amazon that it was important for it to be this way if you want to keep the people that made it what it is,” Vogt says. He mimicked Twitch’s deal structure: Cruise operates as an independent subsidiary of GM, and its executives are incentivized to stick around. Cruise’s $1 billion price tag included just $300 million in cash, with another $300 million in GM stock and the rest hinging on Cruise’s ability to retain key employees—mainly Kan and Vogt—and hit technological milestones. “By design, we wanted it to succeed post-acquisition,” Vogt says.

Still, there’s a natural culture clash between Cruise’s focus on speed and GM’s focus on durability. Doug Parks, GM’s vice president for autonomous technology and vehicle execution, and Kan and Vogt’s new boss, calls it a “give-and-take.” “They’re focused on getting two to three cars to work, and we’re focused on getting 20,000 to 30,000 cars to work,” he says. “They don’t have expertise on what it takes to make a vehicle durable over many miles.” (The Cruise guys won’t argue there. Vogt’s first assembly-plant tour was “jaw-dropping in its scale,” he says.)

Likewise, GM doesn’t have much experience in the art of “move fast and break things,” but it’s starting to learn. Since acquiring Cruise, Parks’ team has ditched its daily staff meeting where everyone reviews projects, in favor of a Cruise-style daily 15-minute phone call to discuss the biggest issue holding the team back. “It doesn’t allow people to say, ‘We’re going to go off for a week and work on a proposal,’ ” Parks says. “Now it’s, ‘Take the next 23 hours and answer the question.’ ”

Meanwhile, Cruise gets to enjoy the perks of a large, powerful parent company. The startup has access to GM’s testing and validation facilities in Warren, Mich. When something breaks on one of Cruise’s modified Chevy Bolts, Cruise staffers can call the GM team that designed that exact part, rather than spend hours trying to figure out what went wrong. And GM’s brand carries weight. “Suppliers pay attention to us,” Kan says. “You email from your GM email, and it opens all the doors.”

Since the deal closed, Cruise has more than doubled its staff. The company’s office is filling up quickly, something that makes Kan nervous. Office space in San Francisco is already scarce and pricey, and Cruise has a unique challenge: It needs to drive cars in and out of the office. Beneath Cruise’s barnlike warehouse is a fleet of Chevy Bolts with names emblazoned on their hoods (Platypus, Narwhal, Charlie, after Vogt’s dog), each outfitted with lidar laser sensors that look like old-timey sirens. There’s only one ramp in and out of the basement. The cars are starting to feel crowded too.

Cruise could solve its problem by moving its operations to the suburban sprawl of Silicon Valley proper. Like all the automakers, GM has an innovation outpost in Palo Alto. But no one at Cruise has even visited it. Staying independent is too important—and besides, they’re busy. Vogt and Kan can barely spare an hour for a reporter. As I scan my list of questions, Vogt is antsy to get back to his desk. “Is that good for you?” he asks. “I think we’ve given you quite a bit of color.” The clock is ticking, and their legacy is on the line.

A version of this article appears in the October 1, 2016 issue of Fortune with the headline “Driven in the Valley.”

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Kyle Vogt resignation —

After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, cruise founder and ceo resigns, gm-owned cruise "failed to disclose" full video and key crash details, dmv said..

Jon Brodkin - Nov 20, 2023 6:07 pm UTC

The CEO of self-driving car firm Cruise resigned yesterday following an accident in which a Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. California officials accused Cruise of withholding key information and video after the accident, and the company's self-driving operations are on hold while federal authorities investigate.

"Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise," co-founder Kyle Vogt wrote in a post on twitter.com . "The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future," he also wrote.

Cruise is owned by General Motors, which bought the company in 2016. Vogt expressed optimism about Cruise's future without him, saying the team is "executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision."

"As for what's next for me, I plan to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas. Thanks for the great ride!" Vogt wrote.

On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email. "As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened. We need to double down on safety, transparency, and community engagement," he wrote in the email quoted by Reuters .

Robotaxi kept moving after hitting woman

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last month suspended Cruise's permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing. Cruise subsequently announced a "pause" of all of its driverless operations in the US, which includes San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, and Miami. Cruise said the pause affects about 70 vehicles.

The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. A woman entered a crosswalk at nighttime and was hit by two cars, the second of which was the Cruise vehicle. First, a Nissan Sentra "tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV," Cruise said in a description of the incident .

The Cruise vehicle then moved "rightward before braking aggressively, but still made contact with the pedestrian," the company said. "The AV detected a collision, bringing the vehicle to a stop; then attempted to pull over to avoid causing further road safety issues, pulling the individual forward approximately 20 feet."

The accident happened at 9:29 pm on October 2. The Nissan driver fled the scene, and Cruise said it was sharing information with authorities to help them track down the hit-and-run driver. The woman suffered severe injuries and was reportedly still in "serious condition" at San Francisco General Hospital in late October.

In an order of suspension that was published by Vice , the California DMV said that in a meeting on October 3, "Cruise failed to disclose that the AV executed a pullover maneuver that increased the risk of, and may have caused, further injury to a pedestrian. Cruise's omission hinders the ability of the department to effectively and timely evaluate the safe operation of Cruise's vehicles and puts the safety of the public at risk."

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on October 16 opened an investigation into Cruise vehicles after receiving reports of two pedestrian injuries, including the October 2 incident. The Cruise cars "may not have exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway," the agency said. Another Cruise robotaxi hit a fire truck in San Francisco in August.

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Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns from robotaxi company

By Mike Murphy

Kyle Vogt resigned as chief executive of autonomous-vehicle company Cruise late Sunday, following the recent suspension of Cruise's operations on public roads.

"Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise," Vogt, who co-founded Cruise and oversaw its 2016 acquisition by General Motors Co. (GM), tweeted Sunday night. "The last 10 years have been amazing, and I'm grateful to everyone who helped Cruise along the way."

He did not give a reason for his departure. In a series of tweets, Vogt touted Cruise's accomplishments and encouraged its employees, and said he intends to spend time with his family and "explore some new ideas."

In a statement Sunday night, San Francisco-based Cruise said it had accepted Vogt's resignation, and that Mo Elshenawy, its executive vice president of engineering, will serve as president and CTO effective immediately. Craig Glidden will serve as president and continue as chief administrative officer. And Jon McNeill, a GM board member who joined Cruise's board last month, was appointed vice chairman of Cruise's board.

Also read: OpenAI investors trying to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing: reports

Last week, Cruise suspended its supervised-driving operations on public roads while it undergoes an independent safety review. Its fully autonomous operations were suspended last month, following an Oct. 2 crash in San Francisco, in which a Cruise driverless car ran over a pedestrian who had first been hit by another car. After briefly stopping, the Cruise car drove about 20 feet in an attempt to pull over, dragging the victim, who suffered critical injuries, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. According to the Chronicle, Cruise allegedly withheld portions of video footage of the crash from authorities.

Quickly after that, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's robotaxis from operating in San Francisco, citing safety concerns. Cruise had also been operating driverless cars in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix.

In its most recent earnings report in October, GM reported a $1.9 billion loss for its Cruise business between January and September, including $732 million in third-quarter losses. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra said Cruise still had "tremendous" growth potential.

"Rest assured we do have funding plans that will support Cruise's expansion," she told analysts in GM's earnings conference call, according to a FactSet transcript.

-Mike Murphy

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-19-23 2259ET

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Vogt resigns as CEO of Cruise following safety concerns over self-driving vehicles

The Associated Press

A General Motors logo is displayed outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant on Jan. 27, 2020, in Hamtramck, Mich. Paul Sancya/AP hide caption

A General Motors logo is displayed outside the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant on Jan. 27, 2020, in Hamtramck, Mich.

Kyle Vogt has resigned as CEO of Cruise, General Motors' autonomous vehicle unit, as questions build about the safety of self-driving cars.

Vogt's decision to step down, announced late Sunday, follows a recent recall of all 950 Cruise vehicles to update software after one of them dragged a pedestrian to the side of a San Francisco street in early October. The California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the license for Cruise .

The company earlier announced it had paused operations for a review by independent experts.

"The results of our ongoing reviews will inform additional next steps as we work to build a better Cruise centered around safety, transparency and trust," the company said in a statement. "We will continue to advance AV technology in service of our mission to make transportation safer, cleaner and more accessible."

Cruise won approval to transport fare-paying passengers last year. Since then, the autonomous vehicles have drawn complaints for making unexpected, traffic-clogging stops that critics say threaten to inconvenience other travelers and imperil public safety.

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

Late last year, U.S. safety regulators said they were investigating reports that autonomous robotaxis run by Cruise can stop too quickly or unexpectedly quit moving, potentially stranding passengers.

Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide.

Cruise had been testing 300 robotaxis during the day when it could only give rides for free, and 100 robotaxis at night when it was allowed to charge for rides in less congested parts of San Francisco. Vogt earlier said most collisions were caused by inattentive or impaired human drivers, not the AVs.

Cruise's statement said its board had accepted Vogt's resignation. Mo Elshenawy, Cruise's executive vice president of engineering, will become president and chief technology officer. It said Craig Glidden also will serve as president and continue as chief administrative officer for Cruise, an appointment announced earlier.

GM acquired a majority stake in Cruise when it was a startup in 2016. The company invested to take 80% stake in the company in May 2021.

Vogt attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a co-founder of Twitch, an interactive livestreaming service for content including gaming, entertainment, sports and music. Amazon acquired Twitch for about $1 billion in 2014.

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G.M.’s Cruise Moved Fast in the Driverless Race. It Got Ugly.

Cruise has hired a law firm to investigate how it responded to regulators, as its cars sit idle and questions grow about its C.E.O.’s expansion plans.

By Tripp Mickle ,  Cade Metz and Yiwen Lu

Tripp Mickle, Cade Metz and Yiwen Lu have been reporting throughout the year on the rollout of robot taxis in San Francisco.

Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.”

To make streets safer, he said in an interview, cities should embrace self-driving cars like those designed by Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors. They do not get distracted, drowsy or drunk, he said, and being programmed to put safety first meant they could substantially reduce car-related fatalities.

Now Mr. Vogt’s driverless car company faces its own safety concerns as he contends with angry regulators, anxious employees, and skepticism about his management and the viability of a business that he has often said will save lives while generating billions of dollars.

On Oct. 2, a car hit a woman in a San Francisco intersection and flung her into the path of one of Cruise’s driverless taxis . The Cruise car ran over her, briefly stopped and then dragged her some 20 feet before pulling to the curb, causing severe injuries.

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles last week accused Cruise of omitting the dragging of the woman from a video of the incident it initially provided to the agency. The D.M.V. said the company had “misrepresented” its technology and told Cruise to shut down its driverless car operations in the state.

Two days later, Cruise went further and voluntarily suspended all of its driverless operations around the country, taking 400 or so driverless cars off the road. Since then, Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media.

The board plans to evaluate the findings and any recommended changes. Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex software systems, is conducting a separate review of the crash, said two people who attended a companywide meeting at Cruise on Monday.

Cruise employees worry that there is no easy way to fix the company’s problems, said five former and current employees and business partners, while its rivals fear Cruise’s issues could lead to tougher driverless car rules for all of them.

Company insiders are putting the blame for what went wrong on a tech industry culture — led by the 38-year-old Mr. Vogt — that put a priority on the speed of the program over safety. In the competition between Cruise and its top driverless car rival, Waymo, Mr. Vogt wanted to dominate in the same way Uber dominated its smaller ride-hailing competitor, Lyft.

“Kyle is a guy who is willing to take risks, and he is willing to move quickly. He is very Silicon Valley,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies. “That both explains the success of Cruise and its mistakes.”

When Mr. Vogt spoke to the company about its suspended operations on Monday, he said that he did not know when they could start again and that layoffs could be coming, according to two employees who attended the companywide meeting.

He acknowledged that Cruise had lost the public’s trust, the employees said, and outlined a plan to win it back by being more transparent and putting more emphasis on safety. He named Louise Zhang, vice president of safety, as the company’s interim chief safety officer and said she would report directly to him.

“Trust is one of those things that takes a long time to build and just seconds to lose,” Mr. Vogt said, according to attendees. “We need to get to the bottom of this and start rebuilding that trust.”

Cruise declined to make Mr. Vogt available for an interview. G.M. said in a statement that its “commitment to Cruise with the goal of commercialization remains steadfast.” It said it believed in the company’s mission and technology and supported its steps to put safety first.

Mr. Vogt began working on self-driving cars as a teenager. When he was 13, he programmed a Power Wheels ride-on toy car to follow the yellow line in a parking lot. He later participated in a government-sponsored self-driving car competition while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 2013, he started Cruise Automation. The company retrofitted conventional cars with sensors and computers to operate autonomously on highways. He sold the business three years later to G.M. for $1 billion .

After the deal closed, Dan Ammann, G.M.’s president, took over as Cruise’s chief executive, and Mr. Vogt became its president and chief technology officer.

As president, Mr. Vogt built out Cruise’s engineering team while the company expanded to about 2,000 employees from 40, former employees said. He championed bringing cars to as many markets as fast as possible, believing that the speedier the company moved, the more lives it would save, former employees said.

In 2021, Mr. Vogt took over as chief executive. Mary T. Barra, G.M.’s chief executive, began including Mr. Vogt on earnings calls and presentations, where he hyped the self-driving market and predicted that Cruise would have one million cars by 2030.

Mr. Vogt pressed his company to continue its aggressive expansion, learning from problems its cars ran into while driving in San Francisco. The company charged an average of $10.50 per ride in the city.

After a Cruise vehicle collided with a Toyota Prius driving in a bus lane last summer, some people at the company proposed having its vehicles temporarily avoid streets with bus lanes, former employees said. But Mr. Vogt vetoed that idea, saying Cruise’s vehicles needed to continue to drive those streets to master their complexity. The company later changed its software to reduce the risk of similar accidents.

In August, a Cruise driverless car collided with a San Francisco fire truck that was responding to an emergency. The company later changed the way its cars detect sirens .

But after the crash, city officials and activists pressured the state to slow Cruise’s expansion. They also called on Cruise to provide more data about collisions, including documentation of unplanned stops, traffic violations and vehicle performance, said Aaron Peskin, president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.

“Cruise’s corporate behavior over time has increasingly led to a lack of trust,” Mr. Peskin said.

With its business frozen, there are concerns that Cruise is becoming too much of a financial burden on G.M. and is hurting the auto giant’s reputation. Ms. Barra told investors that Cruise had “tremendous opportunity to grow” just hours before California’s D.MV. told Cruise to shut down its driverless operations.

Cruise has not collected fares or ferried riders in more than a week. In San Francisco, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and Austin, Texas, hundreds of Cruise’s white and orange Chevrolet Bolts sit stagnant. The shutdown complicates Cruise’s ambition of hitting its goal of $1 billion of revenue in 2025.

G.M. has spent an average of $588 million a quarter on Cruise over the past year, a 42 percent increase from a year ago. Each Chevrolet Bolt that Cruise operates costs $150,000 to $200,000, according to a person familiar with its operations.

Half of Cruise’s 400 cars were in San Francisco when the driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company’s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.

To cover its spiraling costs, G.M. will need to inject or raise more funds for the business, said Chris McNally, a financial analyst at Evercore ISI. During a call with analysts in late October, Ms. Barra said G.M. would share its funding plans before the end of the year.

Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.  More about Tripp Mickle

Cade Metz is a technology reporter and the author of “Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and The World.” He covers artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas. More about Cade Metz

Yiwen Lu reports on technology for The New York Times. More about Yiwen Lu

Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation

Autonomous taxis have arrived in car-obsessed Los Angeles, the nation’s second most populous city. But some Angelenos aren’t ready to go driverless .

Cruise, the embattled self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors,  said that it would eliminate roughly a quarter of its work force , as the company looked to rein in costs after an incident led California regulators to shut down its robot taxi operations.

Tesla, the world’s dominant maker of electric vehicles, recalled more than two million vehicles  to address concerns from U.S. officials about Autopilot , the company’s self-driving software.

An Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s Autopilot software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic chief executive ?

Along for the Ride: Here’s what New York Times reporters experienced during test rides in driverless cars operated by Tesla , Waymo  and Cruise .

The Future of Transportation?: Driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco . “The Daily” looked at the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves .

Stressing Cities: In San Francisco and Austin, Texas, where passengers can hail autonomous taxis, the vehicles are starting to take a toll on city services , even slowing down emergency response times.

A Fast Rise and Fall: Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, wanted to grow fast. Now, the company faces safety concerns  as it contends with angry regulators, anxious employees and skepticism about the viability of the business .

• Car Industry

GM's Dan Ammann takes over as CEO of Cruise Automation

Co-founder Kyle Vogt continues on as president and chief technology officer.

GM President Dan Ammann has been named CEO of Cruise Automation, a company whose acquisition by GM he spearheaded in 2016.

The business of developing self-driving cars is booming, and if you want proof of that, look no further than Cruise Automation's  Thursday announcement that it has appointed GM President Dan Ammann as its new CEO. Company founder Kyle Vogt will work alongside Ammann as Cruise's chief technology officer and president beginning on Jan. 1, 2019.

Dan Ammann led the charge in General Motors ' acquisition of Cruise back in 2016 and was the company's lead point of contact at GM. Since his appointment to president at GM, Ammann has been in charge of GM Financial and was instrumental in the sale of Opel to the PSA Group.

"These appointments further demonstrate our commitment to transforming mobility through the safe deployment of self-driving technology and move us closer to our vision for a future with zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion," said Mary Barra, GM chairperson and CEO. "As we move toward commercial deployment, adding Dan to the strong team led by Kyle is the next step."

Cruise also recently received a $2.75 billion investment from Honda and Japanese investment group, Softbank. The company is currently sitting on a $14.6 billion valuation.

General Motors Cruise AV is more than a Bolt without a steering wheel

Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigns from robotaxi company

K yle Vogt resigned as chief executive of autonomous-vehicle company Cruise late Sunday, following the recent suspension of Cruise’s operations on public roads.

“Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise,” Vogt, who co-founded Cruise and oversaw its 2016 acquisition by General Motors Co. tweeted Sunday night. “The last 10 years have been amazing, and I’m grateful to everyone who helped Cruise along the way.”

He did not give a reason for his departure. In a series of tweets, Vogt touted Cruise’s accomplishments and encouraged its employees, and said he intends to spend time with his family and “explore some new ideas.”

In a statement Sunday night, San Francisco-based Cruise said it had accepted Vogt’s resignation, and that Mo Elshenawy, its executive vice president of engineering, will serve as president and CTO effective immediately. Craig Glidden will serve as president and continue as chief administrative officer. And Jon McNeill, a GM board member who joined Cruise’s board last month, was appointed vice chairman of Cruise’s board.

Also read: OpenAI investors trying to get Sam Altman back as CEO after sudden firing: reports

Last week, Cruise suspended its supervised-driving operations on public roads while it undergoes an independent safety review. Its fully autonomous operations were suspended last month, following an Oct. 2 crash in San Francisco, in which a Cruise driverless car ran over a pedestrian who had first been hit by another car. After briefly stopping, the Cruise car drove about 20 feet in an attempt to pull over, dragging the victim, who suffered critical injuries,  according to the San Francisco Chronicle . According to the Chronicle, Cruise allegedly  withheld portions of video footage  of the crash from authorities.

Quickly after that, the  California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s robotaxis  from operating in San Francisco, citing safety concerns. Cruise had also been operating driverless cars in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Phoenix.

In its most recent earnings report in October, GM reported a $1.9 billion loss for its Cruise business between January and September, including $732 million in third-quarter losses. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra said Cruise still had “tremendous” growth potential.

“Rest assured we do have funding plans that will support Cruise’s expansion,” she told analysts in GM’s earnings conference call, according to a FactSet transcript.

Self-driving operator Cruise returns to metro Phoenix, with a human behind the wheel

Cruise, an autonomous vehicle operator and subsidiary of General Motors, is resuming operations in Phoenix, but this time, a human driver is controlling the car.

The company halted operations in October 2023 after its permit to operate in California was revoked. At the time, Cruise was operating autonomous vehicles in Phoenix with riders who had enrolled in the company’s testing program .

Cruise will begin manual driving without autonomous systems engaged to create maps and gather information, the company said in an announcement Tuesday.

During the months that driverless operations were halted, Cruise continued testing in simulated environments and closed courses, according to a company announcement. The company's goal is to return to fully driverless operations.

The company laid off about 24% of its full-time staff in December, following the pause to operations. Former CEO and Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt stepped down from his role in November, he announced on X, formerly Twitter. Co-founder Daniel Kan also resigned in November.

In February the company announced it had hired Steve Kenner as chief safety officer. Kenner had previously worked for self-driving trucking company Kodiak as vice president of safety.

As Cruise begins operations with human drivers in Phoenix, it will be collecting data for map information, like speed limits, stop signs, traffic lights, lane paint, right turn-only lanes and other road features. The vehicles will not have autonomous systems activated.

Cruise will have a new operational design domain, and areas, like Phoenix, where the company previously operated will be updated during this process, a company representative said.

Reach the reporter at  [email protected] . Follow her on X, formerly Twitter  @CorinaVanek .

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We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.

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We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Learn more here .

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The future looks bright for driverless ridehail and delivery. We’re working to bring new transportation options that work for you and your community. Learn more here .

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Ford’s blue cruise self-driving tech was in use during fatal crash, probe finds.

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The driver of an electric Ford SUV involved in a fatal crash earlier this year was using the automaker’s self-driving technology at the time of the reck, federal investigators concluded on Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report that the Ford Mustang Mach-E involved in the deadly accident on on Interstate Highway 10 in San Antonio, Texas, on Feb. 24 had “Blue Cruise” in use.

Based on data from the vehicle, the Ford driver had been operating in Blue Cruise — which Ford touts as a “hands-free highway driving technology” — before crashing into the rear of a stationary Honda CR-V, killing the 56-year-old Honda driver, the NTSB said.

A San Antonio police report said previously the Ford had “partial automation” engaged at the time of the crash.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has also said that it’s investigating the San Antonio accident — as well as another fatal accident that took place in Philadelphia on March 3 involving a Ford Mach-E where Blue Cruise was also suspected to be in use.

NHTSA requires automakers to report all fatal crashes involving advanced driver assistance systems.

The Pennsylvania State Police said Thursday that a Mach-E was in the left lane when it struck a stationary Hyundai Elantra that had collided earlier with a Toyota Prius, Fortune earlier reported.

During the crash, the driver of the Prius, who was outside of his vehicle, was struck and thrown into the southbound lanes, the release said, and a person from the Hyundai also was on the roadway and was hit.

Both individuals, males aged 21 and 20, were pronounced dead at the scene, according to Fortune, citing a police news release.

A criminal investigation surrounding the March 3 crash is also underway, and the 23-year-old driver of the Ford Mach-E believed to be in Blue Cruise mode faces charges of homicide by motor vehicle while driving under the influence.

In both instances, the Ford Mach-Es rammed into vehicles stopped on freeways at night — and neither the driver nor the supposedly high-tech systems were able to stop the collisions from happening.

Ford’s website, however, boasts that its Blue Cruise system allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel while it handles steering, braking and acceleration on 97% of controlled access highways across the US and Canada.

Still, the company has issued warnings that the tech — which it introduced in the 2021 model of its Mustang Mach-E and F-150 vehicles — does not replace human drivers, who have to be ready to take control at any time.

A spokesperson for Ford told The Post that “there no priority higher than safety” at the company, and noted that it’s “collaborating fully with both the NHTSA and the NTSB.”

It’s not the first time that the NHTSA and the NTSB have investigated crashes involving self-driving technology.

Most notably, Elon Musk’s Tesla recalled nearly all of its vehicles sold in the US late last year to fix a flaw in its “Autopilot” assisted-driving system — which came as Virginia officials found a car had the software enabled during a fatal crash last July.

The recall of more than 2 million cars — reportedly the largest in Tesla’s history — emerged as part of an ongoing investigation by the NTSB that began began more than two years ago and included reviews of 956 crashes that allegedly involved Autopilot.

The government agency determined that Tesla Autopilot’s existing safeguards “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” of the software.

Before being allowed to sell its electric fleet again, Tesla had to ensure its vehicles received “additional controls and alerts,” per the NTSB’s request, that prompt drivers to pay attention when using Autopilot, including by keeping both hands on the steering wheel and watching the road.

With Post wires.

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Automobili Pininfarina’s one-of-a-kind Battista Reversario hyper GT goes 0-60 mph in 1.79 sec [Video]

All-electric supercar specialist Automobili Pininfarina is at it again with a new one-of-a-kind iteration of its Battista hyper GT. The boutique Italian automaker has unveiled the Battista Reversario – a new bespoke commission that builds off the ultra-rare Battista Anniversario – one of the most expensive EVs on the planet. Check out both bespoke Battistas in the video below.

You may have heard of Automobili Pininfarina, but chances are you’ve never seen one of its exclusive electric hypercars in person. The revamped Italian brand’s first EV, the Battista hyper GT, is named after its predecessor’s founder and initially debuted as a concept EV at Monterey Car Week 2018.

That luxury hyper GT was followed by the announcement of an even more exclusive version of the Battista  called the Anniversario . That version features handcrafted components like its exterior paint, and its production was limited to a mere five units, each selling for an estimated $2.9 million a pop.

Since then, we’ve seen Automomobili Pininfarina go even more exclusive (and expensive) with its bespoke hyper GT models. Last summer, it debuted a one-of-kind variant of the Battista called the Edizione , dedicated to the first-ever F1 champion, Nino Farina. That vehicle was also limited to five units.

Outside of the Battista, we’ve seen a unique concept called the PURA Vision, a “collectible masterpiece” called the B95 , and a topless all-electric design called the Barchetta , which costs a mind-boggling 4.4 million euros ($4.78 million)—currently the most expensive EV on the planet .

Most recently, Automobili Pininfarina unveiled yet another one-of-a-kind commission of its flagship hyper GT—the Battisa Reversario. Have a look.

Battista Reversario arrives for one special customer

Automobili Pininfarina shared the first images of the Battista Reversario alongside a video cruising with its Anniversario sibling. Speaking of which, the automaker shared that the new bespoke hyper GT was commissioned by a previous customer who already owns one of the five Battista Anniversarios in existence.

This one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-repeated design was configured by the unnamed customer and the Automobili Pininfarina design team, featuring a split color scheme of a Bianco Sestriere gloss lower body and an upper body in Grigio Antonelliano gloss. Like the Battista Anniversario, the Reversario features pinstripes and an upper stripe in the automaker’s signature Iconica Blu.

The interior also features Iconica Blu accenting the white-on-white Pilota seats, cupholder retainer, headliner center bezel, and seatbelts. Like its Battista siblings, the Reversario sits atop a 120 kWh lithium-ion battery and can zoom from 0 to 60 mph in 1.79 seconds, 0 to 120mph in 4.49 seconds, and 0 to 200 km/h in a blistering 4.75 seconds.

With both Battistas now in their collection, the new Reversario customer describes the two hyper GTs as “the twins.” Per the release:

Anniversario and Reversario were destined to be created by the Automobili Pininfarina team. I simply challenged them to understand what could be created if you follow your heart and passion. All credit goes to them.  The twins are complete and total perfection that has never been achieved by the automotive world. Not only do they have legacy and pedigree, where they bear the name and indelible mark of the world’s greatest car designer, they also complement each other as mirror images.  The twins are and forever will be associated with love perfected. The twins can never be separated because they are truly unified in design.

Automobili Pininfarina is not currently sharing the price of the Battista Reversario, but you can view the twins in action in the video below:

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Scooter Doll is a writer, designer and tech enthusiast born in Chicago and based on the West Coast. When he’s not offering the latest tech how tos or insights, he’s probably watching Chicago sports. Please send any tips or suggestions, or dog photos to him at [email protected]