[Global Times Special Correspondent in the United States Feng Yaren] On the 10th local time, General Motors of the United States announced that it would stop supporting the Cruise self-driving taxi project, which took several years and cost $10 billion to develop, citing the time and cost required for business expansion and intensified competition.

According to a previous report by the British magazine The Economist, GM had suspended the operation of Cruise’s business last year because one of the company’s cars hit a pedestrian in San Francisco, causing California to revoke Cruise’s operating license in the state.

ABC said on the 10th that according to a shareholder report submitted by GM to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, since GM acquired a controlling stake in Cruise for $581 million in 2016, the self-driving taxi service has accumulated losses of more than $10 billion, while revenue has been less than $500 million.

According to reports, GM will give priority to the development of its advanced driver assistance system Super Cruise for personal vehicles. Dave, senior vice president of software and service engineering at GM, said that Cruise will bring its software, artificial intelligence and sensor development results to GM to jointly improve GM’s driver assistance system. Like nearly all major automakers, GM is struggling with sluggish demand for cars and is under pressure to invest in new technologies, including electric vehicles, to compete with emerging Chinese automakers.

The move is another step backward for self-driving cars, which have proven to be far more difficult to develop than companies once expected, ABC added. As of October, Waymo, owned by Alphabet in the United States, had 100,000 passengers per week in California and Phoenix, and is accelerating plans to expand its self-driving taxi service to more areas. Musk has also said that Tesla will produce self-driving taxi Cybercabs by 2027. In China, companies such as Baidu are leading Western players such as Tesla. According to The Economist, Baidu’s self-driving taxi Carrot Run has been tested 6 million times across the country since its launch in 2022.