General Motors plans to test thousands of driverless cars in 2018
General Motors plans to test thousands of driverless cars in 2018
Thousands of modified Chevrolet Bolt cars may hit the roads next year, as part of a major deployment by General Motors to test its self-driving system on public roads.
GM, along with ridesharing app Lyft, will test the cars and possibly pick up members of the public, similar to Uber’s self-driving program in Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to a report from Reuters.
The program will supposedly be split between Lyft and GM’s car-sharing service, Maven.
The deployment of thousands of self-driving vehicles on public roads may improve the public’s perception of the technology. It could also boost GM’s standing in the self-driving industry, where it is currently perceived as behind Google’s Waymo, Tesla, and Uber.
GM has not commented on the report, Lyft also declined to comment.
GM has made a few major moves to ensure it does not fall behind in the self-driving race, including the near $ 1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation, the $ 500 million paid for a minority stake in Lyft, and new billion dollar research facilities.
See Also: General Motors begins self-driving tests on Michigan public roads
Even with these major investments, GM has yet to show the same levels of progress and sophistication that its self-driving rivals are capable of. It does, however, have a few dozen Chevrolet Bolt cars on San Francisco roads, which are reaching Level 3 autonomy.
GM has not been as detailed in its plans for the future as Ford and Tesla, who have both said they want to achieve Level 4 autonomy in the next few years. This major deployment of test cars could be a signal that GM wants to remove humans from the driving experience, replacing car ownership with rental and taxi services.
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