Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy later to bring this down.

I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous costs and challenges involved.

There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand to show big revenues, even if they had to throw 1.5 bodies per car at the problem.

Prediction: GM will offload cruise, a buyer will replace leadership and layoff 40% of the company. The tech may live to see another day, but given the challenges that GM has generally (strikes, EVs, etc), they can no longer endlessly subsidize Cruise.