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Jenkins, the senior vice president for autonomous vehicle
platforms, is leaving after six years with the company, he said
in a post on LinkedIn.
On Oct. 2, a pedestrian in San Francisco hit by another vehicle
was thrown into the path of a self-driving Cruise car and
dragged 20 feet (6 m).
In the aftermath, California suspended the company's permit for
driverless vehicles, and Cruise pulled all its U.S. self-driving
vehicles from testing. The unit's then-CEO, Kyle Vogt, and
co-founder Dan Kan resigned in November.
Jenkins' LinkedIn post said his team was responsible for
developing Cruise's self-driving hardware, including microchips,
sensors and computers and worked with GM on product development.
Cruise Co-President Mo Elshenawy, in an internal company post
viewed by Reuters, confirmed the departure of Jenkins and said
the autonomous vehicles platforms team was critical to Cruise's
efforts to return its vehicles back to the road as soon as
possible. Neither Jenkins nor Elshenawy gave a reason for the
departure.
"I recognize that this came as unexpected news. While we're in a
transitional period right now, all of us here at Cruise are
getting to define what comes next - that's an incredibly
exciting place to be," Elshenawy said in the internal message.
He said the autonomous vehicles platforms team was crucial for
Cruise's future and "central to our 'Back to the Mission' work,
to improving our detection systems, compute and sensor suites
for current and future programs so we can return to the road as
soon as possible."
A Cruise spokesperson confirmed Jenkins' departure.
"We remain committed to our hardware and systems development in
the Bolt and Origin platforms," the spokesperson told Reuters,
referring to Cruise's self-driving vehicles.
(Reporting by Greg Bensinger and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Jamie
Freed and Christopher Cushing)
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