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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

China’s Advantage: Across China , more assisted driving systems and robot taxis are being tested than in any other country, with censors limiting discussions about safety.

A Very Slow Restart: An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise, G.M.’s driverless car subsidiary, to take all of its cars off the road. The question now is when they will return .

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 .

Cruise’s driverless autonomous cars start giving rides to paying passengers

The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity .

Initially, Cruise’s driverless autonomous offering will operate only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and only on designated streets in the city. But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service.

UPDATE: As of last night, fared rides are now rolling out to our customers in SF. If you’re waiting to take your first driverless ride, we’re inviting more people into our AVs each week, so sit tight— it’ll be worth it! 😉 https://t.co/UpjuQ9K81W pic.twitter.com/CwkD1LftnV — cruise (@Cruise) June 23, 2022

It sounds like Cruise is still a ways off from making this offering available far and wide to San Franciscans eager to take a trip with a robot chauffeur, but this is still a major step toward a future where AVs crawl the streets in big cities picking up paying fares.

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Here’s what happens when cops pull over a driverless Cruise vehicle

In case you were wondering.

By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

Share this story

It’s been a little over two months since Cruise started letting the people of San Francisco catch rides on its driverless robotaxis, and one of its cars already had a run-in with police. In a video originally posted to Instagram last weekend, the user captures the awkward — and somewhat comical — interaction between the San Francisco Police Department and the autonomous vehicle after it’s pulled over for not having its lights on.

After stopping the Chevy Bolt-turned-Cruise vehicle, a police officer goes up to its window, tries to (unsuccessfully) open the door, and starts walking back to his cruiser. The autonomous vehicle begins to drive away in what at first seems like the perfect start to a police chase, but then pulls over and puts its hazards on at a point farther down the road. Police drive up behind the vehicle once again, get out of the car, and then hover around the vehicle as they presumably try to figure out how to turn its headlights back on.

As Cruise spokesperson Aaron Mclear explained to The Verge , the autonomous vehicle didn’t drive away to escape from police — it was trying to find a safer location to pull over in, a move that most human drivers can’t get away with so easily. Mclear also confirmed that the SFPD pulled over the vehicle for not having its headlights on, and says Cruise has since fixed the issue.

“The vehicle yielded to the police car, then pulled over to the nearest safe location for the traffic stop,” Mclear said. “An officer contacted Cruise personnel and no citation was issued. We work closely with the SFPD on how to interact with our vehicles and have a dedicated phone number for them to call in situations like this.”

An SFPD police report obtained by The Verge reflects Cruise’s statement:

On Friday, April 1, 2022, at approximately 10:00 pm officers observed a vehicle travelling without activated headlights at Clement St. and 8th Ave. Officers stopped behind the vehicle and discovered that there was no driver in the vehicle and no other occupant was present. During this contact officers affected a traffic stop. The vehicle moved forward but stopped again to yield for the officers. During the stop officers made contact with the remote operator of the driverless vehicle. Upon the officer’s notification a maintenance team responded to the vehicle’s location and took control of the vehicle. No citation was issued during the traffic stop.   

Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, uses LIDAR technology to power its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities. The company has been using the cars to shuttle around its San Francisco-based employees since 2017 , but only just opened a waiting list to taxi the city’s general population.

We still don’t know what exactly caused the Cruise vehicle to operate without its headlights. Perhaps the car’s automatic headlights feature was disabled or failed to detect the darkness around it. Either way, it is a bit concerning. Cruise vehicles are only authorized to drive from 10PM to 6AM, which obviously makes headlights pretty important.

In 2018, a self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian walking her bike across the road in Tempe, Arizona. Subsequent investigations from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that Uber turned off Volvo’s factory emergency braking system to prevent any interaction with Uber’s self-driving software, but it’s unclear whether that contributed to the crash.

Update April 12th 11:15AM ET: Updated to add a police report from the SFPD.

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Cruise: Everything you need to know about the autonomous vehicle company

Image credit: waltarrrrr on flickr

What is Cruise?

Cruise is an autonomous vehicle company founded in 2013 by Kyle Vogt and Dan Kun. Cruise is a subsidiary of General Motors and employs more than 1,600 people. It has raised $9.25B since inception from investors such as SoftBank, Honda, Microsoft, and T. Rowe Price.

As of February 2020, Cruise had 180 autonomous vehicles registered with California’s DMV, and reportedly plans to deploy up to 300. Since it was acquired by GM, Cruise has tested its technology on the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt. Some of its vehicles have achieved Level 4 autonomy which means they can operate by themselves in most situations, but humans can still manually override the system. In the last five years, Cruise’s vehicles have covered more than two million miles of testing.

Cruise Timeline

• March 2016: General Motors acquires Cruise for more than $1B as it seeks to ramp up its self-driving car efforts. At the time of purchase Cruise only had 40 employees.
• April 2017 : GM invests $14M into a new research and development facility and announces the company will hire more than 1,100 employees.
• May 2018: SoftBank’s Vision Fund invests $2.25B to acquire a 19.6% stake, while GM puts in an additional $1.1B.
• October 2018: Honda announces it will invest $750M in Cruise and commits to an additional $2B over the next 12 years
• November 2018: Dan Ammann, then President of GM, is named the new CEO of Cruise. Kyle Vogt becomes the CTO and Dan Kun transitions to Chief Product Officer.
• May 2019: Cruise raises an additional $1.15B from existing investors such as Honda, SoftBank, and GM. It’s now valued at $19B.
• January 2021: Microsoft participates in a $2B funding round that values Cruise at $30B. ( t weet this )

Key figures

Cruise is not currently profitable:

• In 2020, it posted a loss of $900M.
• In 2019, it posted a loss of $1B.
• In 2018, it posted a loss of $728M.

Cruise says the global autonomous vehicle market is worth $8T :

• Ride-hailing is worth $5T
• Freight is worth $2T
• Data insights and in-vehicle experiences are worth $500B each.

Cruise’s progress

Cruise began testing its autonomous vehicles (with a human safety driver) on public roads in Scottsdale, Ariz., and San Francisco in 2017. That same year it launched its “ Cruise Anywhere ” self-driving ride-share service for employees in San Francisco.

In January 2020, Cruise unveiled the Origin , a vehicle designed for its ride-hailing service. The all-electric vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals. It’s built like a shuttle with doors on both sides and comes with wireless internet and device chargers, along with three interior cameras for safety. Origin is designed to last one million miles of driving.

Cruise received permission in October that year to test fully autonomous vehicles (without a human safety driver) on public roads in California. It was allowed to test five vehicles any time of the day but they could not exceed speed limits of 30 mph or operate during heavy rain or fog.

In December 2020, Cruise began testing its vehicles (without a human safety driver) in San Francisco.

Its biggest rival, Alphabet-owned Waymo , has been testing autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, Ariz., since 2017 and launched a ride-hailing service in the city in October 2020. Despite having pledged to launch its own commercial taxi feature by the end of 2019, Cruise has yet to establish a new release date for the service.

Cruise partnerships and acquisitions

Walmart — In November 2020, Cruise and Walmart announced they would launch a pilot program in Phoenix in 2021 to deliver groceries using Cruise’s self-driving cars. Walmart said partnering with Cruise would help it achieve its goal of reaching zero emissions by 2040, as it is the only self-driving car company with an “entire fleet of all-electric vehicles powered with 100% renewable energy.”

Microsoft — Microsoft and General Motors entered a strategic relationship in January 2021 to expedite the commercialization of autonomous vehicles. Cruise will integrate Microsoft Azure's cloud computing service into its self-driving technology .

Voyage — In March 2021, Cruise acquired self-driving startup Voyage, which serves retirement communities, for an undisclosed price. Voyage operates low-speed self-driving cars to transport older adults, including at least 125,000 customers in Florida. Cruise will reportedly combine its own software and engineering capabilities with Voyage’s market, which, Bloomberg notes, is well suited for driverless taxis.

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About the writer: Jigney Pathak is a Business Researcher at Inside who loves technology, finance , and sports. He has a Bachelor of Business Administration with a finance specialization and has previously worked at Salesforce.

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Driverless car startup Cruise's no good, terrible year

Cruise rolled out hundreds of its robotaxis in San Francisco this year. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Cruise rolled out hundreds of its robotaxis in San Francisco this year.

A year ago, the future seemed bright for the driverless car startup Cruise. As 2022 wrapped up, CEO Kyle Vogt took to Twitter to post about the company's autonomous vehicles rolling onto the streets of San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix.

"Folks," he wrote , "we are entering the golden years of AV expansion."

Robotaxis, which give rides to any paying customer with no driver at the wheel, were one of the latest tech products to be fully unleashed to the public this year. Dozens of companies, including Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox, have been competing to be king. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, was one of the fastest growing of those startups.

GM had poured billions into Cruise as the company emphasized scaling up at an unprecedented pace.

"We're on a trajectory that most businesses dream of, which is exponential growth," Vogt said during a July call with investors. He boasted about the size of Cruise's driverless car fleet, adding that "you will see several times this scale within the next six months."

By August, California had given Cruise permission to run around 300 robotaxis throughout San Francisco. (Waymo deploys around 100). And the company had started testing in several more cities across the country, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.

But then, in October, things took a disastrous turn.

California orders Cruise driverless cars off the roads because of safety concerns

On the night of October 2, one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in San Francisco leaving her critically injured and fighting for her life. Her identity has not been released.

A cascade of events followed that ended with Vogt resigning and GM announcing it was pulling hundreds of millions in funding. Cruise is now facing government investigations , fines that could total millions and an uncertain future.

"They were the bull in a china shop. They just kept charging ahead," says Missy Cummings, a George Mason University professor who runs the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center. "When we sat around and discussed who was going to have the worst accident in that crowd, everyone knew it was going to be Cruise."

Tension was building

Even before the October incident, tension over self-driving cars was simmering in San Francisco.

Both Cruise and Waymo say their driverless cars are safer than human drivers – they don't get drunk, text or fall asleep at the wheel. The companies say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities and the roads are safer with their autonomous systems in charge.

But, as robotaxis became increasingly ubiquitous throughout San Francisco, residents complained about near collisions and blunders. Local reports showed footage of confused vehicles clogging a residential cul-de-sac , driving into wet cement at a construction site and regularly running red lights .

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

An activist group called Safe Street Rebel has been cataloging the incidents , which now clock in at more than 500. The group figured out that if they put orange traffic cones on the hoods of driverless cars , they would render the vehicles immobile. So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest.

"When you start having passive aggressive protests like people putting orange cones on your cars, this isn't going to come out your way," says Cummings.

Protesters demonstrate against driverless cars in front of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco in August. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Protesters demonstrate against driverless cars in front of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco in August.

Cruise and Waymo also ran into problems with San Francisco's police and fire departments . At government hearings, the agencies testified that the driverless cars were a nuisance. They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations , including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders.

"Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in an August hearing.

California allows robo-taxis to expand and emergency responders aren't happy

Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion.

Seven days after the vote, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger.

A pedestrian incident and an alleged cover-up

After the fire truck collision, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to reduce its fleet in half, to 150 cars, while it investigated the incident.

Then, just weeks later, the Cruise car hit the pedestrian. Based on police reports and initial video footage from Cruise, the woman was first struck by a hit-and-run human driver whose vehicle threw her into the path of the driverless car.

Cruise said its car "braked aggressively to minimize the impact." It provided some news outlets with video of the incident, which ended right after the driverless car hit the woman . Cruise also gave footage to the DMV.

Over the next few weeks, Cruise continued to expand – launching driverless robotaxi rides in Houston . Then, in a surprise announcement at the end of October, the DMV ordered Cruise to immediately stop all operations in California.

The DMV says Cruise withheld footage from the night of the incident.

The facts stated in the DMV's order of suspension for Cruise. California Department of Motor Vehicles hide caption

The new video footage showed the Cruise car striking the pedestrian, running her over, and then dragging her an additional 20 feet at 7 miles per hour as it pulls to the curb and stops on top of her.

Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon associate professor and autonomous vehicle safety expert, says most human drivers wouldn't respond this way. "Before you move your car, you're going to find out where the pedestrian is," Koopman says. "The last thing you want to do is be driving over them, but that's exactly what the Cruise vehicle did."

Cruise says it gave regulators the entire video immediately after the incident. But the DMV says it was only after requesting the footage that Cruise handed it over – 10 days later.

It quickly snowballed for Cruise after that. The company recalled and grounded all of its cars nationwide – nearly 1,000 vehicles. It initiated a third-party safety review of its robotaxis and hired an outside law firm to examine its response to the pedestrian incident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an investigation into Cruise .

Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children , according to internal documents. And The New York Times reported that remote human workers had to intervene to control Cruise's driverless vehicles every 2.5 to five miles.

By mid-November, Vogt was gone. Nearly a dozen other executives stepped down and Cruise announced it was laying off nearly a quarter of its staff.

Ripple effect across the industry

Cruise will continue its work on driverless cars as a commercial product, says spokesperson Navideh Forghani. She added that the company's approach is "with safety as our north star." GM's spokesperson says it remains committed to Cruise "as they refocus on trust, accountability and transparency."

Waymo has avoided much of the public ire that built up over the summer. Its spokesperson told NPR that "safety is our mission and top priority" and that "we treat every event seriously by investigating it to understand what happened."

But Cruise's controversy still affects the self-driving industry overall, says Carnegie Mellon's Koopman.

"The whole industry, with one voice, has been promoting the same talking points as Cruise," Koopman says. "So, if one of them is discredited, it discredits the entire industry because they're all using the same playbook."

A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says.

Both Cruise and Waymo have released studies saying their vehicles are involved in fewer crashes than human drivers. One Waymo study says it has an 85% reduction in injury-causing collisions and a Cruise study says it has a 74% reduction . Neither company has released the raw data of these reports.

Koopman says the safety narrative can unravel when people see the driverless cars on city streets making the same mistakes as human drivers. He says he'd like to see the companies focus on making sure the technology is actually safe.

"To be clear, human drivers will text, they'll be distracted. There's the saying, 'the lights are on, but nobody's home,'" Koopman says. "But it turns out, that happens to robotaxis too."

• San Francisco
• driverless cars
• self driving
• human drivers

GM ditches Cruise’s custom-designed driverless car

G eneral Motors told reporters on Tuesday that it has indefinitely suspended production of its self-driving Cruise Origin robotaxi, reports The New York Times . The company will refocus on using the Chevy Bolt EV, which Cruise has already been using. A modified version will go into production next year.

The Origin created “regulatory uncertainty” owing to its design, GM CEO Mary Barra said in her letter to shareholders today . It was to be purpose-built for self-driving , with no steering wheel or pedals, no clear front or rear, and no driver; but estimates put each vehicle’s cost in the hundreds of thousands. The company said in September last year it was “just days away” from regulators approving the Origin for mass production.

Then a month later, Cruise’s robotaxis were banned in California after multiple incidents, including one where a driverless Cruise car hit and dragged a San Francisco pedestrian . Since then, GM, which has lost several billions on the company already, has had to keep Cruise afloat while it reorients.

Meanwhile, Cruise has been testing its Chevy Bolt EV robotaxis in Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, using human safety drivers. The company resumed testing earlier this year with manually driven vehicles and no passengers.

Cruise's head of artificial intelligence wants the autonomous-car startup to be defined by its AI innovation

• Hussein Mehanna is Cruise's head of AI.
• He explained how the self-driving startup is using AI and machine learnings to scale its service.
• Mehanna also said Cruise could be the first "AI native" company.
• Because of his work, Insider named Kyle Vogt, chief technology officer, cofounder, and president of Cruise, to our annual list of the 10 leaders transforming supply chain.
• Visit Insider's Transforming Business homepage for more stories .

For autonomous vehicle startup Cruise, the future isn't just about artificial intelligence. It's about machine learning, and that's why Cruise is teaching its electric vehicles to drive themselves in San Francisco — one of the most complicated urban environments for self-driving cars to operate in.

"Learning how to drive in San Francisco is amazing for AI," said Hussein Mehanna, the company's head of AI, noting that the dense and unpredictable streets are ultimately an advantage. "The more interesting the data, the more the machine can learn."

Mehanna hopes that learning will not only revolutionize autonomous driving, but also plant Cruise at the forefront of the next big thing: AI-based companies.

Taking machine learning to a new level

General Motors bought Cruise back in 2016 for around $1 billion, and through subsequent investment rounds, it's grown to a nearly $30 billion valuation. The company's goals are spectacularly ambitious, with CEO Dan Ammann effectively calling for the end of personal-car ownership and spurring Cruise to go after a multi-trillion-dollar future global ride-hailing opportunity.

In order to get there, Cruise needs game-changing hardware and software — a quest overseen by Kyle Vogt, its cofounder and chief technology officer — and high-profile partners, including ones it already has like GM and Honda. But Cruise also needs artificial intelligence and machine learning at a level that, frankly, nobody has seen before.

As powerful as 21st-century AI sounds, Mehanna said it's only recently that its full capabilities have been unleashed. Advancements in robotics and machine learning have made that possible.

"I always had a fascination with AI," Mehanna, whose career path to Cruise included stints at Facebook and Google, told Insider in an interview. But where are all the robots we might have expected to see by now? 

Mehanna said the kind of AI we see in demonstrations — dancing humanoids robots on YouTube, for example — doesn't scale.

"They're scripted to handle a certain number of use cases," he said. 

Enter machine learning, which he said has the critical power to generalize.

Related stories

This is, to put it mildly, huge. At Cruise, Mehnna's team is tackling a whole new way of undertaking computer science, led by those autonomous EVs cruising through San Francisco. 

If it all comes together and Cruise is able to successfully commercialize its service, then Mehanna said that the company could notch an unprecedented achievement: becoming what he termed the first "AI-native company."

Dreaming of robots that can do much, much more

"It's a new concept, and we're inventing it," he said. The analogy that leaped to mind for him was being able to handle HTML coding for the internet of the late 1990s. 

"If you knew HTML, you were a rocket scientist," he said. The skillset led to internet-native companies such as Google. That history is now staged to repeat with Cruise.

"In five to 10 years, AI natives will be the status quo," he said.

The endgame of this process should be what he called a "general-purpose robot," able to learn as humans now learn. It could drive a car, fly a plane, or attend to more mundane tasks. 

"My dream," he said, "is to get my laundry folded by a robot."

Talking to Mehanna, one gets that sense that we're just at the beginning of something radical in changing how the world operates. Cruise has already made huge leaps in teaching a car to drive itself, once the stuff of science-fiction movies. But for Mehanna, those apparent leaps are but small steps toward robotic applications and machine learning remaking numerous aspects of everyday life — aspects that we take for granted or have long assumed would always have to involve natural, rather than artificial intelligence.

In the short term, however, he's simply contemplating machine learning as a prerequisite to Cruise accomplishing what it set out to do five years ago.

"At Cruise, you can't have a company without AI," he said.

• Main content

Cruise Origin is the electric, driverless taxi of tomorrow

Cruise's boxy, electric people mover ditches the steering wheel and the driver's seat, optimizing for spacious, safe and autonomous urban ride hailing.

• North American Car, Truck and SUV of the Year (NACTOY) Awards Juror

Autonomous vehicle developer Cruise debuted the Cruise Origin, its new vision for a totally driverless, emissions-free vehicle of tomorrow, at an event in San Francisco Tuesday night. And yes, it's another futuristic box-on-wheels that I really, really hate looking at, but this autonomous people mover isn't supposed to be sexy. It's meant to be a safe, spacious and city-friendly autocab. The Origin is a driving appliance or, perhaps more specifically, a not-driving appliance built to power an autonomous ride-hailing service sometime in the near future.

Cruise knows a thing or two about ride-hailing. It's been testing a fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs for the past three years and running an autonomous Cruise Anywhere  beta test limited to its employees since 2017 -- albeit with a human safety driver on board. Last year, Cruise showcased a fourth-gen version of its self-driving Bolt with no steering wheel , not-so-subtly hinting at its ambitions of  Level 5 autonomy .

In many ways, the Cruise Origin is the culmination of those ambitions. Details about the vehicle are still sparse, but here's what we learned at the unveiling event tonight.

The Origin has no driver's seat, just two bench seats that face inward for up to six passengers.

Powering the Origin is a GM-sourced electric motor with the battery pack slung beneath the passenger compartment. We don't have power figures and we don't know range, but these metrics aren't really the point of a low-speed urban shuttle. You probably didn't think about the fuel economy and horsepower of the last Uber or taxi you hailed, and Cruise is smartly reckoning that you probably won't care about the range of the Origin if it can get you where you're going. "This is a service you share, not a product you buy," as Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said multiple times during the evening.

The electric powertrain frees up room in the cabin, making sure that as much of the Origin's fairly compact footprint gets dedicated to the passengers as possible. The upright, boxy profile does the rest. Sliding doors help prevent collisions with cyclists and pedestrians when loading or unloading -- though they'll still have to dodge the people who come spilling out of them at each stop. Inside you'll find generous seating and legroom for four passengers with the folding center armrests deployed or up to six souls if you don't mind scrunching in.

Hyundai partners up with Uber Elevate, debuts air taxi concept S-A1

The Origin has no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver seat. It's designed around complete autonomy with the passengers facing inward toward one another. Facing outward is Cruise's suite of sensors and autonomous software, which the company has been honing and developing over three years and millions of miles of testing in San Francisco, Detroit and Scottsdale, Arizona.

You've got your familiar lidars and radars and a new, owllike stereoscopic optical sensor suite that rapidly swivels back and forth, locking onto, recognizing and tracking multiple pedestrians, cyclists and other important details. The Origin features four of these swiveling all-seeing arrays -- one for each vehicle corner -- which can also see in pitch darkness, presumably on the IR spectrum. Cruise calls this blend of sensors Superhuman Sensing, playing up the advantages they offer over human drivers who can only really look in one direction at a time when they're not being distracted.

There are four of these swiveling stereoscopic camera pods, one for each corner.

Eventually, Cruise plans to build a whole lot of these things, so they've gotta be somewhat economically feasible and scalable. The Origin is built around a modular design that should make the sensors easy to repair and upgrade as new sensor technologies develop. Cruise reckons it can build an Origin for about half as much as a traditional EV SUV and keep its vehicles on the road for over 1 million miles each. If they can achieve such a service life, it'll be a solid return on investment. The modular design also means that Cruise could eventually outfit Origins as delivery vehicles or for other purposes, putting the boxes on wheels to work while the city sleeps.

On the consumer side, Cruise isn't ready to talk about how much its eventual ride-hailing service will cost, but estimates that driverless cabs like the Origin can save passengers up to $5,000 per year compared with traditional human-piloted ride-hailing services or owning a car, eliminating parking costs, personal vehicle depreciation, insurance, paying and tipping the driver or wasting time driving yourself. Of course, until we know how much an Origin ride will cost, we can't do the math to see if we agree.

Cruise also isn't ready to talk about when and where the Origin will be produced -- though it does seem confident that it can and will build it. And questions regarding the time frame and launch window for the ride-hailing service that the Origin will support are unfalteringly met with a smile and a "Stay tuned" from Cruise's representatives. I have been told that we can expect more details to trickle out over the coming weeks, so we'll be following this the story of Cruise and its Origin as it develops.

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Russian River Cruises

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• Moscow — St. Petersburg
• Moscow — Astrakhan
• Astrakhan — St. Petersburg
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Russia is again welcoming travelers!

• A negative PCR test is all that's needed to enter Russia
• Regular flights are now operating to / from Russia
• Visas can be issues quickly (Volga Dream provides your invitation)
• All Volga Dream personnel and guides are fully vacinated
• Bookings are transferable without penalty for 12 months
• Volga Dream arranges PCR-tests if needed for your outbound flight

Check our COVID-19 Policy page to learn more.

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Luxurious river cruises in russia.

Explore authentic Russian cities. Enjoy premium service and engaging activities as you sail the Volga River.

2022 Cruise Season

Join our signature small group journeys and cruise in luxury along the Russian Volga river!

The Russian Odyssey

An extended 'South to North' view of Russia from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg through Moscow.

Explore Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia’s Golden Ring in greater depth. Stay at gorgeous Four Seasons hotels. Enjoy special access to iconic cultural sites.

Lower Volga

Treat yourself to an unforgettable experience cruising the Volga river from Moscow to Astrakhan. The tour includes 2 nights in Moscow.

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Select destination Moscow — St. Petersburg Moscow — Astrakhan Astrakhan — St. Petersburg

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A Volga river cruise is more than a geographical voyage; it’s also a journey through Russia’s rich and captivating history. No other experience takes you so completely to another place and time. The Volga is Europe’s longest and largest river; it meanders through the stories of Ivan the Terrible and his rise to power, the two historic ‘Greats’ Peter and Catherine, and then on into today. It’s a unique opportunity to see modern Russia in the context of its intriguing history, ably assisted by friendly and professional academics and tour guides. A Volga Dream Russian river tour promises to leave you with an unforgettable afterglow of fond memories.

Moscow to St. Petersburg River Cruise

Moscow and St. Petersburg are Russia’s best-known cities, but the towns of Russia’s historic Golden Ring are delightful too. The luxurious Volga Dream offers a unique opportunity to visit these Russian gems by sailing gently along the Volga River on an unforgettable cruising experience. In small, exclusive groups you’ll enjoy preferential access to some of Russia’s most significant cultural sites.

Moscow to Astrakhan River Cruise

Your River Cruise on the luxurious MS Volga Dream takes you from Moscow along Russia’s grand Volga River to the legend that is Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. Along the way, you’ll discover the treasures of Yaroslavl, the oldest city on the Volga, medieval Nizhniy Novgorod and beautiful Kazan, the ancient Tatar capital. We plan our tour carefully to combine the very best of Moscow with a world-class Volga River cruise.

Discover Russia with MS Volga Dream - Click-through map

We love hearing from guests about their time in Russia and one comment often hear is how surprised people are by the Russian capital. We can’t say for certain what people expected but we do know that it’s always far removed from what they imagined! It’s been called a modern metropolis, a cosmopolitan city, an historic gem, an architectural treasure and a cultural powerhouse, among other descriptions. Majestic Moscow has always surprised our guests and left them with lasting and fond memories.

Russia’s famous Golden Ring is an archipelago of historic towns surrounding Moscow. Uglich is one of the oldest and was founded under Igor, the last Varangian prince. It once resisted the Mongol invasion and its ancient walls saw the grisly murder of young Dmitri, son of Ivan the Terrible. The impressive Church of St. Dmitri on the Blood, with its classic onion domes and blood red walls, is a fine example of classic Russian architecture. The tour ends with an enchanting choral concert.

This, the oldest city on the Volga River, and now a UNESCO World Heritage site, boasts a wealth of ancient orthodox treasures. The impressive Transfiguration of the Savior, adorned with murals depicting St. John’s apocalyptic visions can be seen in the Spassky Monastery. The Church of St. Elijah the Prophet is decorated with an awe-inspiring selection of rich frescoes. For a real taste of pre-revolutionary Russia, visitors are entertained by a costumed reception at the Governor’s House.

Close to the shores of White Lake once were the ‘tsar’s fishing grounds’. It lies in a place so serene that ancient monks chose to build no fewer than three holy sites here, including the Ferapontov Monastery. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, its chapels boast magnificent frescoes by Dionysius, one of Russia’s most renowned icon painters. The Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery was a refuge for many nobles during tumultuous times and later a fortress that successfully repelled invading armies.

The Karelia region is a vast and naturally beautiful wilderness that spreads all the way from St. Petersburg to the Arctic Circle. The glorious island village of Kizhi consists almost entirely of the traditionally styled wooden buildings of ‘Old Russia’. Among them is the famous Transfiguration Church built in 1714. Remarkably, and in testament to the craftsmen of the time, not a single nail was used in its construction! Kizhi is one of the favorite stops on the river cruise to St. Petersburg.

A typical rural hamlet brought to life by warm and welcoming villagers. Volga Dream guests are invited into local homes to enjoy classic Russian fare, tea with jam and ‘pirozhki’ (pies). Enthusiastic hosts share Russian traditions and the appeal of village life while proudly showing off their scrupulously kept homes and kitchen gardens. The tour continues with a brief bus ride to see a unique World War II memorial and then, for a real glimpse of Russian life, a visit to a local primary school.

Nizhny Novgorod

This was once a wealthy city thanks to its proximity to rich eastern trading routes. During the Soviet era, the city was closed to outsiders because of its military importance. It’s also where many political prisoners were sent to live out their days in exile. The 16th-century Kremlin ramparts offer spectacular views and the city is known for its elaborately decorated churches. For Volga Dream cruise guests, the highlight of the day is an evening folk concert performed by local children.

Sailing along the Volga river, the riverbank gradually ceases to be dominated by Orthodox churches. Instead, beautiful mosques appear as the river crosses into Tatarstan where the first stop is scenic Kazan, the region’s capital. Inside the white walls of the citadel, the famous Kul Sharif mosque and the old Cathedral of Peter and Paul stand side-by-side symbolizing the two faiths’ long and peaceful coexistence in the region. A concert of traditional Tatar music ends the Volga Dream tour in Kazan.

Passing the Zhigulevskie Mountains offers wonderful views from the sundeck before touring the city. One of the key attractions is the fascinating Space Museum, which offers a revealing glimpse of how the Soviet Union pursued its ambitious journey to the cosmos. The town is also noted for its beautiful esplanade, perfect for a relaxed stroll beside the Volga river. This in turn leads to the Samara State Art Museum. Founded in 1897, it is home to a collection of more than 16,000 works of art.

This city is best known for its close associations with cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin. The Russian hero who achieved worldwide fame as the first man in space lived and studied here. Saratov used to be home to a large German community, a heritage that can still be seen in the local architecture. The Volga Dream tour visits the Radishchev State Art Museum, the first picture gallery in Russia outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Originally called Tsaritsyn, the city was renamed Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961 in honor of the USSR’s leader. During World War II, the city’s residents put up a heroic defense, repelling an advancing Nazi invasion. The battle for Stalingrad has gone down in history as a pivotal moment in the bloody conflict on the eastern front. The most ferocious and deadly fighting took place on Mamayev Hill, where an imposing memorial now stands close to the excellent Battle of Stalingrad Panorama Museum.

Saint Petersburg

If Moscow surprises, then St Petersburg delights. Peter the Great founded the city to showcase Russia’s newfound enlightenment. He wanted to show the modern world a cultured and advanced society. In short, he built the city to impress and in that he succeeded splendidly! The striking buildings were designed by some of the finest architects Europe had to offer and even now, the ‘Venice of the North’ never fails to enchant with its spectacular buildings and impressive canal network. It is a city of true grandeur.

Cocktails with the Captain

Commanding any ship is a complex role that calls for a long list of skills. Captains know their vessels inside out as well as well as the routes they sail and when things don’t go to plan, they have to make instant decisions. Above all though, the most important part of the job, underpinning everything they do, is to keep the ship and everyone aboard safe. The Captain’s cocktail party is a great and a wonderful opportunity for passengers and crew to get acquainted as the gets underway.

Matryoshka doll painting

There is nothing more typically Russian than a Matryoshka. It embodies the fact that there’s always something deeper to be found in every aspect of Russian life. Learning the traditional designs and techniques used to decorate these iconic dolls offers a pleasant diversion and some cathartic creativity!

Superb Service & Dining

Our restaurant serves the highest standard of international cuisine, freshly made by our Cordon Bleu Chef. Choose either a sumptuous buffet or set menu for lunch while dinner is always four or five courses with full service. High praise for the exquisite quality of meals is yet another constantly recurring feature in feedback from our guests.

Meet the Professor

From the Mongol hordes to Soviet times, Russia’s history is, like all of Europe’s, a complex web of political intrigue, war and peace, trade and treaties, as well as heroes and villains. Academics devote whole lifetimes to studying Russia’s long past and one of them presents a series of lectures shedding light on everything from Gorbachev to Chekhov, Khrushchev to Ivan the Terrible and of course, contemporary Russia. Our Professor is on board throughout the river cruise for informal conversation.

Beginner’s Russian

The Russian language can be rather beautiful and poetic and we know that many seasoned travelers enjoy trying their hand at different languages. Our onboard teachers provide an introduction to the riches of Russian, so guests can try out a few useful words and phrases on real Russians during the exciting river tours from Moscow to St. Petersburg or from Moscow to Volgograd!

Russian tea tasting

The drink we tend to associate with Russia is vodka, but tea, in fact, is the much more universal beverage of choice throughout the country. Guests will get acquainted with the Russian tea etiquette, a fundamental component of the country's social culture, and enjoy the traditional tea ceremony while cruising from St. Petersburg to Moscow or taking a Grand Volga river tour.

Russian Dinner & Vodka Tasting

All our dining is international but for Russian Dining night, the Chef includes a selection of traditional Russian dishes: Chicken Kiev, Kulebyaka and no Russian table is complete without Borsch. To add to the ‘Taste of Russia’ optional Russian dress, or at least a touch of Russian style, is provided along with enthusiastic help from our staff!

Russian Cooking Class

A plate of pelmeni might not look like much to the untrained eye, but it forms the heart of Russian cuisine and culture. Basically, it's a type of dumpling: small portions of meat and onion wrapped in a thin sheet of unleavened dough and boiled, a little like ravioli. Guests can join a Russian cooking class onboard the MS Volga Dream to learn how to cook this delicious Russian dish.

Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov Piano Recital

Some of the greatest classical music ever written comes from Russia. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting stage for a virtuoso solo recital by our resident concert pianist than the mighty Volga or a better backdrop than the heart of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov’s own serene homeland.

Russian River Cruise Aboard Volga Dream

Moscow to St. Petersburg

Why Volga Dream

Family Owned & Operated

MS Volga Dream is Russia’s only family-owned river cruise ship. She can accommodate up to 100 guests, far fewer than most other cruise ships on the river making for a uniquely friendly and intimate atmosphere aboard.

Five-Star Central Hotels

We at Volga Dream are completely convinced that, our guests should stay in great 5-star hotels in Moscow and St. Petersburg within comfortable walking distance of all the major attractions, theaters and restaurants, rather than having to waste time in traffic.

Luxurious Accommodation

The MS Volga Dream is the most intimate and elegant 5-star cruise vessel in Russia. She boasts 56 cabins, all river facing, ranging from comfortable Standard Cabins to spacious Junior Suites and the luxurious forward facing Owner's Suite.

Russian Cultural Experience

Explore Russia's past with the help of professional tour guides. Our on-board program includes fascinating talks on Russian history and politics, Russian language lessons, a festival of Russian cuisine (including vodka tasting!), and much more.

Gourmet Dining

Our on board restaurant serves international cuisine to the highest standard, all freshly made by our Cordon Bleu Chef. For Russian Dining night, he prepares a selection of traditional Russian dishes: Chicken Kiev, Kulebyaka and Borsch.

Tailored Service

All our service crew members are native Russians who are fluent in English and handpicked by the Owner. Proudly, the Volga Dream is famous for her hard working and very hospitable personnel who take care of every aspect of your life aboard.

Download Our Brochure

It's never been easier to plan your next holiday in Russia. Download our free brochure to learn more about authentic Russian river cruises.

Escape the hassle and bustle and add a satisfyingly informative element to your trip and bring together a colorful mosaic of people, history, traditions,  religion, music and art. These are the many strands that time has woven into what is known today as Russia.

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Service update

We have temporarily paused driverless service in all markets while we evaluate how to best serve our riders and the communities where we operate. For more information, please see our latest blog post .

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Rider Reviews

Safe, smooth.

“Took a ride in the future last night. My first driverless ride from Cruise! Felt safe, smooth and comfortable! Each car navigated some tricky [human-induced] traffic situations flawlessly. 💪🏾”

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“ It’s the kind of transportation that’ll make life much more comfortable. ”

Sergey's review

"Another excellent @Cruise ride. From a hotel to a grocery store and back to the hotel - fully autonomously. If you think the future is not here yet, you’re just yet to try it. Long autonomy. P.S. Tweeting this from an AV."

Mohsen's review

"I was lucky to be one of the first few people in the world to ride a robotaxi and experience the future! The ride looks pretty normal but the experience is unlike anything else I have experienced, the car felt alive!"

RJ's review

"Cruise is so solid even on narrow streets — the steering wheel has no jitter, totally smooth each block."

"Living in the"

“Already living in the future! @Cruise great job y’all. Ride was as smooth as it can get.”

"Thank @poppytheav!"

“On Saturday, I was thrilled to experience my first fully driverless @Cruise ride. I saw an empty AV drive past, pulled out my phone, and a few minutes later was riding! Thanks to @poppytheav and Tortellini (my car).”

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How much does it cost, what’s inside the car, explore next.

Local News | Mentor Cruise-In transforms Civic Center…

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Local news | mentor cruise-in transforms civic center complex into a car lover’s paradise.

From muscle cars to classic models over a century old to flashy new vehicles, the lots at the Mentor Civic Center Complex were filled with car owners, collectors and families enjoying the comfortable weather on Aug. 10.

While many off the vehicles on display have been showcased before by veteran car owners, Linda Reho of Mentor was at the annual car cruise for the first time.

Reho’s company, Insurance Rescue, provides health and life insurance plans focusing on veterans and retirees. During the pandemic years, she was browsing online and saw a 1954 Packard Henney Junior Ambulance and thought it would be a nice compliment to her business.

“This is my first time and the people are all so nice it is a lot of fun,” Reho said. “This has been quite a ride getting it from Minnesota after it was in a New York museum and finding a place big enough to store it, but I also have broken down so many times. But, I figured, I live in Mentor, the show is in Mentor so hopefully I can get here and I did.”

Reho’s ambulance not only runs, it has a working siren and all the amenities in the back. It was one of the more popular vehicles at the event, which was first held in 2002 and attracts upwards of 800 vehicles and 2,500 spectators each year.

Mentor City Councilman Scott Marn, who is a car person himself and owns a 1968 Pontiac GTO with 36,000 original miles, was on site and said he receives plenty of feedback on the event from residents and recognizes it is a popular yearly staple in the city.

“It is all about the community and for those who love cars,” Marn said. “A lot of places do shows like this more frequently, sometimes once a week, but we decided to do it annually and people really get excited for it.”

Tom Konitsky and his son Gus were showing off their 1955 CJ5, a military jeep like the ones used during the 1960 riots.

Tom is a firefighter and said when he is not working he enjoys going to car shows with his vehicle and frequently attends events in Painesville.

Gus was dressed in military attire to match the era of the jeep, which Tom bought out of New Mexico and has enjoyed the process of converting it into an authentic vehicle of its kind.

“We come from a military family and I have celebrated and appreciated the military my whole life,” Tom said. “Slowly we are getting all the parts we need. It has been a fun project.”

Some of the area’s favorite food trucks were on hand including East Coast Custard, Just Wing’n It, Moose’s Tornado Potatoes, and Kettle Corn.

WIXY-1260 was at the Civic Center taking requests and broadcasting live onsite.

Registered classic car owners received goodie bags and dash plaques and one free ticket for door prizes.

Free admission and parking were offered.

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Jamestown Cruise-In Is Friday

Cars are pictured during a past Jamestown Cruise-In. Submitted photo

Hot rods, cool classic cars, and elegant autos of all makes and vintages will line the streets of downtown Jamestown for the 31st year as Jamestown Cruise-In returns from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday.

In addition to the autos, Jamestown Cruise-In features live music. The In Crowd will return to provide live music. They play an eclectic mix of oldies and newer tunes with a focus on lively sound that gets people dancing in the streets.

Jamestown Cruise-In is organized by the CHQ Chamber Committee in Jamestown to attract foot traffic into downtown Jamestown. The objective is to encourage people to sample locally owned restaurants and businesses.

For the second year in a row, Cruise-In will feature a People’s Choice Award text contest. Drivers can fill out the form they’ll get that evening and spectators can text in the number of their favorite car. One driver and one spectator will each get a $50 ShopLocalCHQ Gift Card.

“Our focus is on encouraging people to support local business, and this is one way to do that,” said Carrie Swanson, chamber coordinator. “When we draw visitors to downtown Jamestown, we have seen that sales at local restaurants and retailers increase. We saw that with Cruise-In last year and expect it to be another great night for local businesses while people enjoy the car show. We are grateful to Der Kobbler’s auto club for their on-going partnership in this event. Their participation is crucial to the success of this event. We hope you’ll check out their vehicles and all the others that attend.”

Cruise-In will run from 5 to 9 p.m. on Third Street between Spring and Washington streets, encompassing the connecting streets of Pine, Main and Cherry streets between Second and Fourth streets. The streets will be closed at 3 p.m. that day. All vehicles entering the show are asked to enter between 3 and 5 p.m. at the intersection of Third and Spring streets. The cost is $10 per vehicle. Advance registration is open online now and will remain open until 9 a.m. Friday. Drivers can also just show up with their cars and pay at entry.

Jamestown Cruise-In is sponsored by Jamestown Cruise-In is sponsored by Cummins, Shults Auto Group, 3 C’s Catering, Elegant Edibles Catering, Sandl Photo, Axiom Office Imaging, Chautauqua Patrons Insurance Company, Affinity One Federal Credit Union, LaBella Associates, National Grid, Brooks – TLC Hospital System/Kaleida Health, and AHN Westfield Memorial Hospital.

For more information, visit www.jtny.events or stop at the chamber office, 300 N. Main St., across from the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum.

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Equipped with ice-breaking technology, these huge fancy yachts are the only river cruisers running all year around. The round trip journey takes two and a half hours and floats past all the big sights like the White House, Novodevichy monastery and the Kremlin. There’s a large open air observation deck up top, while the main body of the ship houses a restaurant with a dance floor for a romantic post dinner dance. For a particularly romantic experience take one of the evening boats and admire the bright lights of the city skyline at night.

The most relaxing and picturesque tour that Moscow can offer: a great way to see the city center and its main attractions. This is a perfect alternative to exploring the city by car, if you only have time to do sightseeing during weekday rush hours.

Your English-speaking guide is eager to share every bit of their knowledge about the surrounding landscape, the architecture and historical details.

We conduct Moscow river tour on Radisson Flotilla boats all year around!  It’s warm inside during winter months, while there’s air conditioning during hot summer days. You may also treat yourself to drinks, lunch or dinner on board (drinks and food are not included in tour price).

The cost of an excursion with a personal guide for 1 person

Quay at Radisson Collection Hotel

Government Headquarters ("the White House")

Kievsky Railway Central

Novodevichy Convent

Luzhniki Stadium

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Classic car fans gather at annual Clinton Township Gratiot Cruise

Clinton Township — Bill Brzezinski of Warren has won trophies and been featured in news publications for his gold 1937 Chevy Chevrolet with a cherry-colored interior.

But Sunday, he went to Clinton Township Gratiot Cruise just to meet other car enthusiasts.

"I'm in the Berkley parade every year. I go to talk to the people," said Brzezinksi, 74.

The 21st Clinton Township Gratiot Cruise brought classic car fans to Gratiot Avenue with watchers pulling out lawn chairs near 14 Mile, 15 Mile and 16 Mile roads to see cars like a maroon 1966 Mustang Convertible or a blue green 1932 Willys.

The Clinton Township Gratiot Cruise bills itself as the largest classic car show in Macomb County and traditionally is held a couple of weeks before Oakland County's Woodward Dream Cruise, which is held the third Saturday in August. Other Macomb County communities also have Gratiot cruises. Eastpointe holds a June event, while the North Gratiot Cruise goes through Clinton, Macomb and Chesterfield townships in late September.

Brzezinski, a former millwright, parked his gold Chevy in the parking lot of AMC Theater at 15 Mile Road and Gratiot near many other classic and muscle cars. He talked about the importance to his family of the car, which was sold, rediscovered in a deteriorated condition and restored to its former glory as a retirement project.

"This car originally took two years to build back in 1987. We built it for my sister. At the time, she was into drag racing. ... Then she wanted to get into faster cars, so we dolled this one up. It went to Cobo Hall in 1990.

"A few years later, my sister passed away in the early '90s. ... This car got sold. ... It disappeared until August of 2010 — one year after I retired. I was up on Harper (Avenue) for a last cruise, here sits the car just beat to hell.

"They messed up the front end. They tried to paint it, they over sprayed it, they couldn't match (the paint). They put flames all over it. Everything was falling apart from the front end to the rear end," Brzezinski said.

The car has a new radiator, carburetor and other features costing over $4,000, he said.

"The only thing left was the engine was running. Even the alternator was falling apart. So I needed something to do when I retired, and I helped build the car to start with so I'm rebuilding and rebuilding and still rebuilding," he said.

Another retired auto worker Jerry Vandoorne of Center Line brought his project car, a turquoise two-door 1966 Continental with 30,000 miles, to display in the parking lot near the Family Fun Zone, which had bounce houses, food trucks, live music and a Touch-A-Truck program where attendees could get up close to a fire truck, police car, tow truck and more.

Vandoorne, a body painter, is selling the 1966 Continental, which has its original chrome, all-leather interior intact, for $25,000 because he's got his eye on another classic car for a project.

"Everything I've owned, I painted and this one came across me a few years ago and gave me something to do for a year," he said. "I'm the one that did all the body work, all the paint work, then put it back together."

Vandoorne said he’s been going to the Woodward Dream Cruise for the past 20 years with different classic cars. 

“Gratiot Cruise is now broken up into two. … Roseville doesn’t want to get involved, so you got to skip that city and make another tour down here instead of making it big like Woodward.”

Michelle Valade said she named her white 1971 split-bumper Camaro “Jolene” because it steals every man. She was gifted the car from her husband. 

“I’ve driven it once in three years,” Valade said. 

Conner Bonnell of Roseville, 28, attended the car cruise on Gratiot for the first time with a small blue two-door 1984 Pontiac. 

“I just got it earlier this year. … I really liked the story of it,“ Bonnell said. “People like to put moderately powered engines in them and get so much performance out of them because it’s a 2,500 pound car.”

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Correction: The location of the North Gratiot Cruise has been changed.

WXYZ Editorial: Start your engines for the 2024 Woodward Dream Cruise

WXYZ DETROIT — Metal, muscle, and good memories! That’s what the annual Woodward Dream Cruise is all about. If you like classic cars and trucks, it will be the place to be on Saturday, August 17 th. 

It’s a free and family-friendly event. It’s also a chance to celebrate with a younger generation and show them how Detroit put the world on wheels and became the Automotive Capital of the world and the gold standard for automotive design and manufacturing.

The Woodward dream cruise is a world class celebration of automobiles from every decade. The 50’s -60’s and 70’s showcasing Detroiters passion and love of cars. For sixteen miles throughout nine communities more than 1 million people are expected to line Woodward Avenue. There will be roughly 40-thousand iconic vehicles linking the past and present together.

Here at Channel 7, we take great pride in being the official television partner for the cruise. The day will kick off with a 5K Cruse-in-Shoes fun run or walk in Royal Oak. Then, get ready for the engines to rumble as the eye-popping vehicles take to America’s oldest highway. We’ll capture all the live coverage before, during, and after the day’s activities highlighted in our two-hour primetime special on Channel 7 or streamed to your favorite mobile device.

We’ll also broadcast an encore performance on Sunday morning. The best news of all, a special syndicated edition of the Dream Cruise will air in over 200 cities, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

From coast-to-coast, Channel 7 is proud to share our love of cars and the exciting revitalization of Detroit with the rest of the nation. Please join us for coverage of the world’s biggest one-day cruise.

I’m Mike Murri, V.P. & General Manager Broadcast: August 8 - 11, 2024

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Tom Cruise, John Legend among celebrities on hand to watch Simone Biles

Editor’s note: Follow Olympic gymnastics live results and updates as Simone Biles and Suni Lee compete in the women’s all-around final.

PARIS – The stars were out to see Simone Biles on Sunday morning.

On the northern side of Bercy Arena, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen took their seats near a luxury box with their children, who held up a white flag adorned with the American flag and Olympic rings. A few rows away, Tom Cruise shook hands with a fellow spectator and smiled. Snoop Dogg , who is in Paris as a contributor with NBC, leaned back in a seat in the front row.

Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain and USA snowboarder Shaun White and his girlfriend, Nina Dobrev, were among the other notable figures in attendance Sunday. Businessman David Lauren, the son of eponymous clothing designer Ralph Lauren was also seated nearby.

Sunday's team qualifying drew such high interest because it will be the first time that Biles competes at the 2024 Paris Olympics , where she is expected to add to her gold medal haul. 

2024 Olympic medals: Who is leading the medal count? Follow along as we track the medals for every sport.

It's been nearly three years since Biles, 27, withdrew from the team final at Tokyo Olympics with a case of the "twisties," which caused her to lose a sense of where she was in the air during twisting elements.

After a hiatus of more than a year, she returned to competition last fall and has since reclaimed her place as the world's most dominant gymnast, inspiring fellow athletes and people around the world with both her talent and her outspokenness on mental health.

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Taylor swift isis bombing suspect pictured holding dual knives as chilling details of terrorist plot revealed.

The teen suspects arrested for plotting an ISIS-style “bloodbath” terror attack at one of  Taylor Swift’s Austrian concerts  this week had planned to drive a bomb-filled car into the crowd to kill “as many people as possible” and had reportedly just been hired by the venue to work security.

Terrifying details of the foiled suicide-bombing attack emerged after authorities revealed that two men, ages 19 and 17, had been taken into custody in Vienna on Wednesday — resulting in Swift’s three sold-out Eras shows in the city being canceled.

The two suspects, who investigators say had become radicalized online by ISIS, had allegedly wanted to carry out the attack outside the Ernst Happel Stadium — killing fans with self-made explosives and machetes, security officials said Thursday.

“The suspects actually had very specific and detailed plans … to leave a bloodbath in their wake,” Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said.

The alleged ringleader, a 19-year-old Austrian with North Macedonian roots, had chemical substances and technical devices stashed inside his home when it was raided by authorities, according to officials.

He had allegedly also made progress in building the bomb he planned to strap to the car, they added.

Meanwhile, the second suspect — a 17-year-old Austrian citizen with Turkish and Croatian roots — was nabbed by special police forces near the stadium where the concerts were supposed to take place this week. 

The second suspect had only just been employed a few days ago by a company providing services at the venue during the concerts, officials said.

Sources told German news outlet Kurier that he’d been hired to work there as security.

The pair had displayed noticeable changes in their behavior in the leadup to their arrests, according to Franz Ruf, public security director at Austria’s Interior Ministry.

Here's everything we know about the attempted terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert

• A 17-year-old and a 19-year-old were arrested for plotting an ISIS-style terror attack at one of  Taylor Swift’s Austrian concerts  this week.
• A third suspect, 18, was arrested two nights later.
• The would-be terrorists planned to drive a bomb-filled car into the Eras Tour crowd to kill as many people as possible.
• The main suspect — who authorities say fully confessed to the attack plans after his arrest — had recently sworn allegiance to Islamic State’s leader online, security officials said. He had reportedly just been hired by the venue to work security.
• Swift’s three sold-out Eras shows in Vienna have been canceled.
• Swift previously said her “biggest fear” in life was a violent attack at one of her concerts in a resurfaced article penned by the singer in 2019. 

The older teen had quit his job on July 25 and told people he had “something big” planned, while the 17-year-old recently broke up with his girlfriend, Ruf said.

The pair had also made contact with others who were apparently aware of the terror plot plans.

A 15-year-old boy was also taken in for questioning Wednesday after the sinister plans were uncovered, though it was unclear if he had been arrested.

Meanwhile, both older suspects had been under surveillance by Austrian authorities and were known risks before their arrests, officials said.

Investigators said they found extensive material related to ISIS and al Qaeda during a raid at the second suspect’s home.

The main suspect — who authorities say fully confessed to the attack plans after his arrest — had recently sworn allegiance to Islamic State’s leader online, security officials said.

The older suspect was “clearly radicalized in the direction of the Islamic State and thinks it is right to kill infidels,” said Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, head of the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence.

Haijawi-Pirchner added that the suspect “wanted to carry out an attack in the area outside the stadium, killing as many people as possible using the knives or even using the explosive devices he had made.”

The names of those allegedly involved haven’t been released due to Austria’s privacy laws, and the 17-year-old suspect has reportedly refused to talk since his arrest.

Swift had been slated to play the three sold-out shows, which were expected to draw 195,000 people, Thursday through Saturday.

Nehammer defended the decision to nix the shows, saying they occurred too close to the arrests.

“I understand very well that those who wanted to experience the concert live are very sad,” the chancellor told a news conference Thursday. “Moms and dads are looking after their daughters and sons, who were full of enthusiasm and anticipation for this concert. But it’s also important that in such serious moments as now, it’s inevitable that safety comes first.”

It wasn’t immediately clear for which concert the thwarted attack was meant to target.

“The situation was serious, the situation is serious. But we can also say: A tragedy was prevented,” Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said Thursday.

Event organizer Barracuda Music revealed in an Instagram post late Wednesday that “we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety.”

It cited government officials’ confirmation of the planned attack at the stadium.

News of the terror threat — and subsequent cancellations — devastated “Swifties” across the globe.

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Austria’s Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said in a post in X: “For many, a dream has been shattered today. On three evenings in Vienna, tens of thousands of #Swifties should have celebrated life together.

“I am very sorry that you were denied this. Swifties stick together, hate and terror can’t destroy that,” Kogler wrote.

But some Swifties who had traveled to Vienna for the show were undeterred – with many turning out in the streets of the Austrian capital city to console each other over the near miss.

Filling the city streets by the hundreds, fans joined arms to belt out their favorite Swift songs together, swapped friendship bracelets, and shared group hugs.

Swift’s next shows, scheduled for August 15 through 20 in London, are expected to go ahead as planned.

“We’re going to carry on,” said London Mayor Sadiq Khan, adding that England had learned the hard way to deal with concert threats after a bomb detonated at a 2017 Ariana Grande concert killed 22 people.

Swift hasn’t yet commented publicly about the cancellations or terror threat.

With Post wires

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