Former Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt on Saturday cheered the retirement of autonomous vehicle critic and San Francisco fire chief Jeanine Nicholson, terming it a sign of progress for the city.
What Happened: “Fortunately, she's gone. Progress for SF,” Vogt wrote about Nicholson’s retirement.
Nicholson will step down from her position this month, marking the end of her term as the city’s fire department chief since 2019. She is the first openly LGBTQI Chief of the department.
Vogt on Saturday also shared Nicholson’s latest views on autonomous vehicles with the San Francisco Examiner and wrote, “SF Fire Chief finally admits being wrong about AVs after making false claims.”
"I can't control AI," Nicholson told the newspaper last week. "It's here. I just want it to be as safe as possible, so that's what we're trying to do. Do I like them getting in the way of our operations or anything? No, of course not. But I also know that they're here to stay. So how do we work best with that?"
"I'm hoping it will get better," she said about the performance of autonomous vehicles while noting that the technology still needs work. "I personally like having a person behind the wheel, because they can react when we tell them to get out of the way or whatever. But again, AI is here to stay and we'll just work as best we can with it."
Nicholson’s current acceptance of robotaxis comes a year after Nicholson told the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that Waymo and Cruise autonomous vehicles “weren’t ready for prime time.”
Why It Matters: Vogt was CEO of Cruise when Nicholson criticized AVs in August 2023. However, he stepped down a few months later, following the involvement of one of the company’s robotaxis in an accident in San Francisco.
Cruise halted all its operations in the U.S. after the incident. The company resumed manual driving in the city of Phoenix to gather road information earlier this year in April and in Houston and Dallas, Texas in June, but it is yet to resume operations in San Francisco.
Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, however, is continuing to operate and expand in SF. Interested customers can download the Waymo One app and hail an autonomous ride in an all-electric Jaguar I-PACE.
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