Inferring Cruise occupancy from Kyle Vogt’s fleet dashboard screenshot
I figured out what the car icons mean.
Background
Last month, Kyle Vogt (CEO of Cruise) tweeted a screenshot of Cruise’s fleet management dashboard:
The press: AVs are over-hyped and are still 5-10 years away.
— Kyle Vogt (@kvogt) December 1, 2022
Us: At this moment there are 100 @Cruise AVs in driverless mode in SF, and many are currently carrying passengers.
(from two nights ago) pic.twitter.com/rV6gWRgK0q
Eagle-eyed commenters noticed there were several types of vehicle icons and wondered whether they had any meaning.
Full-resolution image from Kyle’s tweet.
Cruise’s letter to the CPUC
The answer has been hiding in plain sight. Two weeks later, on December 16, 2022, Cruise submitted an Advice Letter (PDF, 23 MB) to the California Public Utilities Commission. They were requesting an expansion of Cruise’s driverless deployment permit.
Page 48 contains a screenshot of Cruise’s fleet monitoring dashboard:
6.3. Fleet Monitoring and Learning
Cruise continuously monitors its driverless fleet while it is in operation. Cruise uses a suite of internal tools to oversee its fleet of Cruise AVs, including information about each Cruise AV on the road, such as their current location, operating condition and passenger states.
Figure 24: Cruise internal fleet monitoring tool (provided as example; actual may vary)
The key shows:
- Failed: red
- Healthy: green
- Recovery: blue
- Occupied: filled
- Vacant: outline
I’m assuming occupied vs. vacant indicates whether the vehicle currently carries a passenger.
Note that the numbers in this image don’t add up, suggesting it might be a mockup rather than the live app. For example:
- 12 failed + 160 driverless + 4 recovery = 24 manual = 200 vehicles total
- 56 awaiting ride assignment + 13 assigned a ride + 131 assignment in progress + 20 returning to facility + 30 unavailable = 250 vehicles total
Interpreting Kyle’s screenshot
We now have a snapshot of Cruise’s ridership at some unknown time on the night of November 29, 2022.
- Healthy, occupied: 2 vehicles
- Healthy, vacant: 85 vehicles
- Total: 87 vehicles
Note that the number of vehicles may be undercounted because:
- The viewport doesn’t show Cruise’s entire service area.
- Some map icons overlap.
- We don’t know whether the filter by AV mode has been set to show only healthy (green) vehicles.
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