But it held equipment on the roof such as lidar sensors that resembled the setup from the Cruise ride-hailing system. The recent activity began in Michigan and Texas in February and the San Francisco Bay Area in mid-April, Sen says. GM initially acquired a majority stake in San Francisco–based Cruise in 2016 and invested more than $8 billion into developing a robotaxi service. But the technology behind Cruise is helping improve the roughly seven-year-old Super Cruise system found in some GM cars. GM’s repurposed Bolts blend into San Francisco–area roads, on which cars with heavy-duty computer gear attached to the roof, back, and sides have become commonplace.