Autonomous ride sharing company Cruise has been given a permit to begin taking passengers in California.
Cruise is a subsidiary of GM with the backing of Softbank Vision Fund, Microsoft and Honda. The permit that they have received allows the company to shuttle companies in their test vehicles without a human safety operator. This means that the company is able to go fully autonomous.
The permit is issued by California’s Public Utilities Commission. This is permit is part of the commissions driverless pilot program. Cruise is also the first company to be able to gain the permit.
“In order to launch a commercial service for passengers here in the state of California, you need both the California DMV and the California PUC to issue deployment permits. Today we are honored to have been the first to receive a driverless autonomous service permit to test transporting passengers from the California PUC,” Prashanthi Raman, Cruise’s director of Government Affairs said according to TechCrunch.
