Article on Reuters said that Cruise is recalling 950 autonomous vehicles operating on U.S. roads and might recall more following an incident involving one of its self-driving taxis, announced General Motors' self-driving unit and the U.S. automotive regulato. The recall is prompted by potential issues with the collision detection subsystem of Cruise's Automated Driving Systems (ADS) software, leading to inappropriate responses after an accident. The incident that triggered this recall involved a pedestrian who was hit by a hit-and-run driver and subsequently struck by a Cruise robotaxi that failed to stop in time. Cruise has deployed an over-the-air software update for its entire supervised test fleet, and all affected autonomous vehicles will undergo repairs before being placed back into service, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). GM's Cruise initiated the voluntary recall after a fresh evaluation of its autonomous vehicle's response to the accident, with the possibility of more recalls in the future.
Not so good news for the company, especially the last part which mentioned that there can be more recalls expected in the future. Bad news for the company, however, did not stop there. Article continued that Cruise recently decided to suspend all its operations across the United States after being instructed by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to remove its autonomous vehicles from state roads. The company is currently under scrutiny by multiple federal investigations regarding the safety of its self-driving cars, particularly two incidents in which the autonomous vehicles seemingly failed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. Cruise, with operations in various U.S. cities, is in a competitive race with Alphabet's Waymo and other entities to introduce self-driving vehicles to the market.
Despite negative news, I have decided to check the stocks of General Motors, if they have been affected according to the news. I quickly found out that the news, in fact, cause the stock to fall. And not only that, but they have also been in decline for quite some time in the last five years. * The highest they have been, in this timeframe, is just under 60 USD, which shows a 100% difference. And gives the growing potential to it, so I have decided to risk it and bought few stocks of their company.
Movement of General Motors stocks in the last five years. (Source: Investing) *
* Past performance is no guarantee of future results.