Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt revealed Thursday in San Francisco a prototype of a custom-built, wheelchair accessible, self-driving robotaxi and said that closed course testing of the driverless vehicle would begin in October.
The vehicle, called the Cruise WAV, is the result of three years of product design, development and testing by Cruise and GM along with its partners on the project BraunAbility and Q’Straint. The WAV looks similar to the company’s purpose-built Origin vehicle, which was revealed as a prototype in January 2020 and is now being tested on public roads in Austin and Miami.
On a social media, Vogt posted a video that shows all of the features, including that the vehicle lowers to the curb, an automatic ramp, two securement options including docking and a hook.
Image Credits: Screenshot/Cruise
In this first generation, the vehicle will be able to serve people who use some of the more popular wheelchair models Permobil M Series, Quantum Q6 Edge, and SM Quickie Q500 / 700M / Q7 chairs. Manual wheelchair users may need to bring a companion in order to secure the straps, according to Cruise.
Cruise noted this is a generation one version of the WAV. The company, working with the disability community, including members of of its own Cruise Accessibility Council, said the goal to make the vehicle accessible to even more users in future generations.
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