GM Is Now Stashing Its Sidelined Cruise Robotaxis In A Defunct Michigan Plant

Late last year, Cruise halted  all of its driverless vehicle operations on public streets. The decision came in the wake of nasty collisions which saw the company’s license to operate suspended in California. This left the GM-backed startup with a whole ton of autonomous vehicles and nothing to do with them. Now, we’ve tracked down where the startup is storing some of the fleet. News-reports suggest it’s been anything but a calm and quiet hiding place for these members of the Cruise fleet.

The news comes to us from reader Nick Thomas, who has a good eye for news. He spotted Cruise Origin shuttles being dropped off at GM’s former Grand Blanc tooling center, and snapped a few spy shots that he’s been kind enough to share with us. The van-like vehicles were dropped off over several days in late February, many in ones and twos on the back of single-tier car trailers. Nick’s photos show the vehicles stacked up in a lot, too, suggesting they’re being stored in their tens, at least.

So far, all of the vehicles have been built in GM’s Factory ZERO Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly where the company’s Ultium-based models are also produced. Locals have reported seeing trucks carrying Origins leaving the factory and heading somewhere up north. Now we know we’re they’re going.

If you’re not familiar with Grand Blanc, that’s because it’s not one of GM’s star factories. The plant was first opened in 1942 to produce tanks for America’s forces in World War II, before eventually becoming an automotive body plant in 1955. Later, it transitioned to serving largely as a tooling facility, before closing in 2013. Given it’s not in active use, it makes sense that GM would use this land for storage when necessary. [Ed Note: Grand Blanc is about 30 minutes north of Auburn Hills. Quite a few Chrysler employees made that commute daily when working from home wasn’t as big of a thing. -DT]. The only catch is that shortly after the cars were delivered, disaster struck.

Yes, as reported by ABC12, a tornado struck the Grand Blanc area in the early hours of February 28. The twister was rated an EF2, with winds peaking at 115 miles per hour. Crucially, there were no injuries or fatalities reported.

As the tornado made its way through the area, it destroyed a warehouse on the corner of Dort and Reid, less than a quarter-mile from the GM plant. The tornado passed remarkably close to the GM-owned buildings where the Cruise Origin vehicles were seen.

It was not initially clear at this stage whether the vehicles or the buildings may have been damaged by the tornado, but an employee at a nearby store confirmed to The Autopian that the tornado missed the plant and didn’t seem to cause any damage. We reached out to Cruise for comment on the matter, and received this response:

These are the Origins built at GM’s Factory Zero in 2023. With the rescaling and retiming of Cruise’s operations we will not be deploying Origins this year. They are being stored at GM’s facility in in Grand Blanc as there is not enough space at Factory Zero.  These vehicles will be used for future AV engineering, development, manufacturing and education.

The Cruise spokesperson also indicated that neither Cruise vehicles nor GM facilities were damaged by the tornado.

What this move could indicate is that Cruise simply has more vehicles than it knows what to do with right now and, in fact, sources told TechCrunch last year that the company had “hundreds of Origin vehicles” in its possession.

With the robotaxis effectively kicked out of California, and with Cruise imposing its own hiatus on operations in Phoenix, Texas and Miami, the vehicles likely needed to be put in storage. It would make the most sense to keep them close to those markets, you’d think, if they were going to be back in service anytime soon. Stashing them in a disused factory in Detroit, close to where they’re being made, suggests the vehicles might have been sent away to be mothballed for some time. [Ed Note: Still, it’s good to have vehicles near GM’s engineering HQ for development reasons. -DT]

On the topic of redeployment, a Cruise spokesperson indicated the company would be taking things slow. As stated above, the Origin vehicles will not be sent out again this year. As for the company’s other efforts, it will restart with Bolt AVs. As per the spokesperson:

We have not set a timeline for deployment. Our goal is to relaunch in one city with manually driven vehicles and supervised testing using Bolt AVs as soon as possible once we have taken steps to rebuild trust with regulators and the public.

In any case, it looks like the Cruise Origin vehicle will be in storage for some time. Who knows, maybe you should keep your eye out on Michigan Craigslist for “one futuristic transport pod, barely used.”

Image credits: Nick Thomas, Grand Blanc Township Police Department