Cruise

Cruise's October 2023 San Francisco incident—autonomous vehicle struck pedestrian, dragged 20 feet, pinned under wheel—triggered regulatory phase transition from "promising technology" to "unacceptable risk." California DMV suspended permits immediately. GM cut Cruise spending by $1 billion (50% reduction) in January 2024. NHTSA imposed $1.5 million fine in September 2024 for disclosure failures. By December 2024, GM announced full robotaxi shutdown, citing "considerable time and resources needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market." The restructuring eliminated $1+ billion in annual expenses. February 2025 merger into GM completed the metabolic collapse: from autonomous subsidiary to internal advanced driver assistance (ADAS) division. This is autophagy at institutional scale—organism consuming its own structures when external feeding becomes unsustainable.

The biological parallel: Cruise operated as a distinct organ system (robotaxi fleet) with dedicated blood supply (GM capital allocation), specialized cells (AV engineers), and independent metabolic function (fare revenue generation). When environmental conditions shifted—regulatory crackdown, public trust erosion, capital efficiency requirements—the parent organism didn't amputate the limb. It digested it. Autophagy recycles cellular components during starvation, breaking down organelles into amino acids for reuse elsewhere. GM redeployed Cruise talent toward Super Cruise expansion (hands-free highway driving, now offered on 20+ vehicle models logging 10 million miles monthly). Former robotaxi perception algorithms now feed production ADAS features. Autonomous driving simulation infrastructure supports internal vehicle development. The components survived; the original assembly dissolved.

Crucial distinction: this wasn't failure, it was metabolic reallocation. Cruise demonstrated technical capability—vehicles operated driverless in San Francisco, Phoenix, Houston (relaunched May 2024 before final shutdown). The company generated operational data on edge cases, regulatory friction, and public acceptance. GM absorbed these nutrients when market conditions made continued autonomous organ function inefficient. Sterling Anderson (ex-Tesla Autopilot chief) joined to lead the restructured group, bringing K-selected competitive experience to what was previously r-selected moonshot culture. The new strategy: "hands-free highway → eyes-off city → driverless personal vehicle" progression, not direct leap to L4 robotaxi. Slower reproductive cycle, higher juvenile survival rate, delayed maturity. Super Cruise logged 705 million miles with zero reported crashes attributed to the technology through 2024. The organism survived by changing its trophic level: from revolutionary apex predator (robotaxis replacing human drivers) to incremental symbiont (ADAS assisting human drivers). Biology's lesson: when your ecological niche disappears, don't die—digest yourself and reconstitute at smaller scale in adjacent habitat.