General Motors (GM) is set to pause production of the Cruise Origin self-driving van following multiple incidents with the subsidiary’s driverless taxis in San Francisco.
After a self-driving Cruise taxi dragged and pinned a woman in the California city last month, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) immediately suspended the company’s license to operate driverless vehicles. This and other incidents with Cruise’s robotaxis have sparked new investigations and caused the company to re-evaluate its self-driving approach, including plans to cease production on the upcoming driverless van.
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt tried to address concerns about the safety of the company’s autonomous vehicles during a company-wide meeting on Monday, from which Forbes obtained audio. During the address, Vogt said that GM will be pausing production of the Origin van, which was expected to ramp up in the coming months.
Vogt told workers, “because a lot of this is in flux, we did make the decision with GM to pause production of the Origin.”
The company was planning to build the Origin van without a steering wheel or pedals, expected to be completely autonomous. Cruise was scheduled to debut the driverless vehicle this year, with some units already having been produced. Vogt also said last year the vehicle would be able to act as a delivery courier when not in use as a robotaxi.
During the meeting, Vogt said that GM had produced hundreds of the Origin van thus far, which he added would be “more than enough for the near-term when we are ready to ramp things back up.”
Vogt also said Cruise is actively cooperating with its regulators and partners during this time, and reports last week showed that the company has hired a third-party legal firm and a technology consultant to aid its internal reviews.
“During this pause we’re going to use our time wisely,” Vogt said.
Just last month, GM CEO Mary Barra said Cruise hoped to have the vehicle on the road in Tokyo as soon as 2026.
“As Cruise continues to push the boundaries of what AV technology can deliver society, safety is always at the forefront,” Barra said during GM’s Q3 earnings call. “And this is something they are continuously improving.”
DMV officials noted that Cruise had “omitted” and “misrepresented” certain details about the October 2 accident with a pedestrian, and Vogt went on to highlight the company’s need to regain the public’s trust during the pause. In addition to facing local scrutiny, Cruise has also garnered additional investigations from federal regulators.
“And so if we want to rebuild trust with these groups, we have got to make sure that we are having those discussions and they hear things from us first and not from the press,” Vogt added during the Monday meeting. “So, candidly because we’ve had some leaks about information coming out of this meeting we have got to be careful what we share from this meeting, or these efforts to rebuild trust could backfire.”
The news of GM’s production pause on the Origin van was later confirmed by GM spokesperson Chaiti Sen, who told Forbes that the automaker would be “finishing production on a small number of pre-commercial vehicles,” before “temporarily” ending production.
“More broadly speaking, we believe autonomous vehicles will transform the way people move around the world, and the Origin is an important part of the AV journey – it’s the first scalable vehicle ever designed specifically for autonomous rides and will make transportation more accessible,” she added in the email.
Cruise is essentially a competitor to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD), which is currently available to users in a beta version. Tesla’s FSD beta, while offering brief periods of hands-free driving on highways, is still meant to be monitored during use at all times, and drivers are expected to be ready to regain control of the car at any point. Additionally, Tesla’s FSD beta system also faces scrutiny from regulators.
Tesla delivering cars with FSD installed, no update required
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send your tips to us at tips@teslarati.com.
Lifestyle
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
California just gave police power to ticket driverless cars, including Tesla’s Cybercab fleet.
California DMV formally adopted new rules on April 29, 2026 that allow law enforcement to issue “notices of noncompliance”, or in other words, ticket autonomous vehicle companies when their cars commit moving violations. The rules take effect July 1, 2026, officially closes a regulatory gap that previously let driverless cars operate on public roads with nearly no traffic enforcement consequences.
Until now, state traffic law only applied to human “drivers,” which meant that when no person was behind the wheel, police had no mechanism to issue a ticket. Officers were limited to citing driverless vehicles for parking violations only. A well-known example came in September 2025, when a San Bruno officer watched a Waymo robotaxi execute an illegal U-turn and could do nothing but notify the company.
Under the new framework, when an officer observes a violation, the autonomous vehicle company is effectively treated as the driver. Companies must report each incident to the DMV within 72 hours, or 24 hours if a collision is involved. Repeated violations can result in fleet size restrictions, operational suspensions, or full permit revocation. Local officials also gained new authority to geofence driverless vehicles out of active emergency zones within two minutes and require a live emergency response line answered within 30 seconds.
Tesla Cybercab ramps Robotaxi public street testing as vehicle enters mass production queue
California’s new enforcement rules arrive at a pivotal moment for Tesla. The company is ramping Cybercab production at Giga Texas toward hundreds of units per week, targeting at least 2 million units annually at full capacity, while simultaneously pushing to expand its Robotaxi service to dozens of U.S. cities by end of 2026. Unsupervised FSD for consumer vehicles is currently targeted for Q4 2026, and when it arrives, Tesla’s fleet may not have a human to absorb legal accountability, under the July 1 rules.
Tesla has confirmed plans to expand its Robotaxi service to seven new cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, with the service already running without safety drivers in Austin. Musk has said he expects robotaxis to cover between a quarter and half of the United States by end of year.
News
Tesla Model X shocks everyone by crushing every other used car in America
The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.
The Tesla Model X was the fastest-selling used vehicle in the United States in the first quarter of the year, crushing every other used car in America.
iSeeCars data for the first quarter shows that the Model X was the fastest-selling used car, lasting just 25.6 days on the market on average, two days better than that of the second-place Lexus RX 350h. The Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model S, in seventh, ninth, and thirteenth place, respectively, also made the list.
The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.
Tesla brings closure to flagship ‘sentimental’ models, Musk confirms
Bringing closure to these two vehicles signaled the end of the road for the cars that have effectively built Tesla’s reputation for luxury and high-end passenger vehicles.
Relying on the sales of its mass market Model Y and Model 3, as well as leaning on the success of future products like the Cybercab, is the angle Tesla has chosen to take.
Teslas are also performing extremely well as a whole on the resale market. iSeeCars data shows that, “while the average price of a 1- to 5-year-old non-Tesla EV fell 10.3% in Q1 2026 year-over-year, the average price of a used Tesla was essentially flat at 0.1% lower across the same period. Traditional gas car prices dropped 2.8% during this same period.”
Additionally, market share for gas cars has dropped nearly 3 percent since the same quarter last year. Tesla has remained level, while the non-Tesla EV market share has increased 30 percent, mostly due to more models available.
Nevertheless, those non-Tesla EVs have seen their value drop by over 10 percent, while Tesla’s values have remained level.
Executive Analyst Karl Brauer said:
“Used electric vehicles without a Tesla badge have lost more than 10% of their value in the past year. This compares to stable values for Teslas and hybrids, and a modest 2.8% drop for traditional gasoline vehicles.”
Teslas, as well as non-luxury hybrids, are displaying the strongest resistance in the face of faltering demand, the publication says. But the more impressive performance is that of the Model X alone.
Tesla’s decision to stop production of the Model X may have played some part in the vehicle’s pristine performance in Q1. With the car already placed at a premium price point, used models are already more appealing to consumers. Perhaps second-hand versions were more than enough for those who wanted a Model X, and only a Model X.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck’s head-scratching trim sold terribly, recall documents reveal
The head-scratching offering was only available for a few months, and evidently, it did not sell very well, which we all suspected. New recall documents on the vehicle from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) now reveal just how poorly it sold.
After Tesla decided to build a Rear-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck trim back in 2025, which was void of many features and only featured a small discount.
The head-scratching offering was only available for a few months, and evidently, it did not sell very well, which we all suspected. New recall documents on the vehicle from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) now reveal just how poorly it sold.
The recall deals with a potentially separating wheel stud and potentially impacts 173 Cybertruck units with the 18-inch steel wheels. The Cybertruck RWD was the only trim level to feature these, and the 173 potentially impacted units represent a portion of the population of pickups. Therefore, it’s not the entire number of RWD Cybertruck sold, but it could show how little interest it gathered.
The NHTSA document states:
“On affected vehicles, higher severity road perturbations and cornering may strain the stud hole in the wheel rotor, causing cracks to form. If cracking propagates with continued use and strain, the wheel stud could eventually separate from the wheel hub.”
Only 5 percent are expected to be impacted, meaning less than 10 units will have the issue if the NHTSA and Tesla estimates are correct. Nevertheless, the true story here is how terribly the RWD Cybertruck sold.
Tesla ended production and stopped offering the RWD Cybertruck to customers last September. For just $10,000 less than the All-Wheel-Drive trim, Tesla offered the RWD Cybertruck with just one motor, textile seats instead of leather, only 7 speakers instead of 15, no Rear Touchscreen, no Powered Tonneau Cover for the truck bed, and no 120v/240v outlets.
For just $10,000 more, at $79,990, owners could have received all of those premium features, as well as a more capable All-Wheel-Drive powertrain that featured Adaptive Air Suspension. The discount simply was not worth the sacrifices.
Orders were few and far between, and sources told us that when it was offered, sales were extremely tempered because customers could not see the value in this trim level.
Even Tesla’s most loyal supporters thought the offering was kind of a joke, and the $10,000 extra was simply worth it.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
Tesla Model X shocks everyone by crushing every other used car in America
