General Motors and Lyft announced a partnership for self-driving cars more than a year ago, and it looks like that partnership may come to fruition next year. According to a report by Reuters, GM is planning to deploy fleets of thousands of self-driving cars in partnership with Lyft at the beginning of 2018.
General Motors and Lyft to deploy self-driving car fleets in 2018. According to the report, the plan comes from two sources that are quite familiar to the car manufacturer's plans. The plan is expected to be the largest experiment of vehicles with full autonomy.
Specially equipped Chevrolet Bolt EVs will be used in the test by Lyft. The test will involve placing the vehicles in ride-sharing fleets across the country.
GM currently does not have plans to sell autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EV vehicles to customers. This is according to the sources that spoke on the condition that they remain anonymous since they the company has not made any official announcement yet.
The car manufacturer confirmed plans to mass-produce self-driving vehicles and to deploy them in using Lyft's ride-sharing network. Both GM and Lyft, however, have not provided details on how large the scale of the production would be or when the vehicles will be deployed.
In a statement, GM said, "We do not provide specific details on potential future products or technology rollout plans." They added that their autonomous EVs will only be part of an "on-demand ride sharing network" and that it will be sooner than what most would think.
If General Motors and Lyft's leaked plan does push through their self-driving vehicles would be arriving sooner than those of other companies. Rival car company Ford is looking to start in 2020 and to deploy its self-driving car fleet by the next year. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is also looking into self-driving cars of its own and will be providing Waymo a small number of Pacifica vehicles for tests.
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