General Motors has announced that it will stop capital the advancement of the Cruise self-driving taxi.

The corporation says it will now “refocus autonomous driving advancement on personal vehicles”.

GM also pointed to the increasingly competitive robotaxi economy as a rationale for the shift.

In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electric car giant’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

GM attributed the transformation of schedule to “the considerable period and resources that would be needed to scale the business”.

The corporation did not declare how many Cruise employees could be moved over to GM.

GM, which owns about 90% of Cruise, said it has agreements with other shareholders that will raise its ownership to more than 97%.

In December 2023, Cruise said it would cut 900 jobs, about a quarter of its workforce.

Cruise had earlier pulled all of its US vehicles from testing after California halted its driverless testing permit.

In October 2023, one of its vehicles hit a pedestrian and dragged her for more than 20ft (6m), leaving her seriously injured.

Cruise admitted to submitting a untrue update to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in connection to that crash, resolving a criminal investigation last month.

Federal prosecutors said Cruise employees did not include a description of the pedestrian being dragged as part of their account on the morning after the incident.

Cruise co-founder Kyle Vogt left the corporation a few weeks later.

On Tuesday, following GM’s announcement, Mr Vogt posted on the social media platform X “In case it was ambiguous before, it is obvious now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”

The Detroit-based manufacturer’s chief executive Mary Barra has previously predicted that the Cruise business could generate $50bn (£39bn) in annual turnover by 2030.

Rival motor manufacturing firms have also struggled with projects to construct autonomous vehicles.

In 2022, Ford and Volkswagen announced that they would shut down Argo AI, their self-driving car joint assignment.

Meanwhile, the emerging robotaxi industry has long attracted major players.

As well as Tesla, competitors to make self-driving cabs include Waymo, a subsidiary of Google’s parent corporation Alphabet – and technology giant Amazon.