Adding insult to injury! General Motors' (GM.US) autonomous driving department's valuation was halved following the collapse of the "Apple car dream".

The internal stock price of Cruise, the autonomous driving car company under General Motors (GM.US), has dropped by more than half compared to a quarter ago, as the impact of an accident in October last year continues to put pressure on the company. According to an email, Cruise employees were informed that a third party estimated their stock price to be $11.80, lower than the previous estimate of $24.27 a quarter ago. A source said that after Apple (AAPL.US) announced the cancellation of its ten-year electric car development plan this week, Cruise's valuation was revised downward. In an email, Craig Glidden, CEO of Cruise, wrote, "We cannot ignore that this estimate is much lower than what we have seen before, and this has an impact on all of our personal lives." Cruise has been working to recover from the accident in October, when a woman was hit by a human-driven car and then dragged by a Cruise autonomous vehicle causing a second accident. The company's operating license in California was suspended, and Cruise has stopped all testing on public roads in the US. Glidden said that Cruise still has a long way to go to achieve large-scale commercialization. The company had planned to launch autonomous taxi services in nearly a dozen cities in the US last year, but later laid off a quarter of its workforce, with the CEO, co-founder, and other employees leaving. These past few months have been very difficult for Cruise, once full of promise. General Motors announced last month that they would cut about $1 billion from Cruise's annual budget, and released a shocking safety analysis report on the October accident, including evidence that executives had withheld important data from regulatory agencies, media, and the public. Several US government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are investigating the company. According to sources, Cruise aims to gradually reintroduce human drivers back to city streets later this year, possibly in Houston or Dallas. However, executives at Cruise reportedly told some engineering and operations staff in recent internal meetings not to expect to see Siasun Robot & Automation taxis on city streets before the fourth quarter. A spokesperson for Cruise stated that the new valuation reflects the "current market conditions and our operational reality," and added that the company is focused on "earning the trust of regulatory agencies and the public before restarting."