"Cruise, the startup General Motors acquired to develop its self-driving car, will launch an autonomous taxi service on the gnarly, crowded streets of San Francisco," CEO Dan Ammann said Wednesday. It will not, however, do so by the end of this year, the deadline it set for itself in 2017. Instead, Cruise will spend the rest of 2019 expanding its tests across the city and working on the less technical aspects of running such a service, from charging its electric cars to working with regulators to soothing a public that may be wary of robots roaming the roads.

Key findings

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Creating a self-driving car that can move through a city safely, reliably, and efficiently is a punishing task. Nobody has managed it. Nobody knows how much time, money, and manpower they’ll need.

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In the past year, Cruise has raised $7.25 billion, counting Softbank and Honda as major investors.

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While the secrecy surrounding this nascent industry makes it hard to know who’s leading the pack, stats suggest that Cruise is one of the few players—along with Waymo, Argo, Uber, and a handful of others—positioned to deliver something as complex as a robo-taxi service.

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