Cruise is set for what it calls "an intensive testing and validation process" over the next few months.
Last month the autonomous vehicle (AV) specialist received $5bn from the automotive financing arm of General Motors to expand its fleet over the next five years.
In a blog post, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann says: “This bumps up Cruise’s total war chest to over $10 billion as we enter commercialisation.”
“I’ve spent time in GM’s pre-production operations centre where the team has started building the first batch of nearly a hundred pre-production Origins,” he continues.
“These will undergo an intensive testing and validation process this summer.”
Ammann also visited GM’s Factory Zero plant where the machinery is being installed to build the Origin by the “tens of thousands”.
The company unveiled Cruise Origin last year, just before the outbreak of Covid-19.
Since then, Ammann explains that hundreds of engineers from General Motors, Honda and Cruise have completed their development work, got supply chains ready and ordered and installed tooling.
“Against all odds, they’ve kept the Origin programme on time, and on track for production at GM’s Factory Zero assembly plant,” he states.
