Wearing the new Cruise sleeve patch, Giants manager Gabe Kapler stands with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and Giants CEO Larry Baer in front of a driverless vehicle in Oracle Park.
Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images
Cruise, the San Francisco-based driverless car company, is amping up its goodwill campaign with a major local partner: the San Francisco Giants.
The General Motors subsidiary rolled out the sponsorship on Thursday, revealing a new team jersey sleeve patch — complete with a driverless car, the word “cruise” and strips of sunset orange in both Cruise and the Giants’ signature colors — as well as a plan to install more than 100 electric vehicle chargers in Oracle Park lots.
The patch deal, set to run through 2025, comes in the first year MLB has permitted teams to pursue jersey sponsors, with about half the league taking advantage so far. The Giants and Cruise did not immediately answer questions about the value of the deal, but the New York Yankees’ recent top-of-market deal was worth about $200 million over eight years, according to Sportico.
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The announcement comes just a week before an Aug. 10 meeting of the California Public Utilities Commission, where the group will determine whether Cruise and Google-owned competitor Waymo may expand their ride-hailing services throughout the city and to all hours.
Currently, Cruise doesn’t allow most San Francisco residents to take its cars to or from Oracle Park. Except for company employees and power users (and University of San Francisco students and faculty), Cruise cars only run 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m. in the Sunset, Richmond and some neighborhoods north of Market Street.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has been critical of the autonomous vehicles’ proliferation in the city, pointing to their occasionally erratic movements — the driverless cars have disturbed emergency scenes and obstructed public transit. In January, firefighters smashed the window of a Cruise vehicle to stop it from driving over their water hoses. Residents have also pushed back, with a recent traffic-cone-on-windshield stunt to stop