Paul Stenhouse: General Motors axes self-driving taxis, what does TikTok's ban mean for the US?

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

GM is pulling out of the self-driving taxi business

General Motors is getting out of the RoboTaxi business, instead focusing on bringing autonomous driving technology to its range of personal and commercial vehicles.

Its "Cruise" cars were taking rides in Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, and the Bay Area. It's been pumping billions into the business, and now says the time and resources needed to scale the business isn't worth it. It says instead it wants to use the team to bring 'semi-autonomous' (known in the industry as L3) to the masses. This would allow your Chevrolet or Cadillac to be able to drive itself on highways or at slow speeds.

If TikTok is banned, what happens next?

“Get ready” is the message from two US lawmakers. Google and Apple must be ready to remove TikTok from their app stores on January 19, they wrote to their CEOs. What does that mean for those who already have it downloaded? It doesn't seem that it'll need to be removed from devices, or that traffic to the app will be blocked. The app will continue to 'work', but because TikTok won't be able to provide support, it will eventually stop working. TikTok says it's "one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms" with 170 million monthly users.

It seems the only thing now to stop the ban is the Supreme Court, or if President Biden or Trump grants a 90-day extension of the January 19th deadline to force a sale.

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