General Motors recently revealed the company's plan to develop and deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in the near future. GM said that it is partnering with ride-hailing service Lyft in this undertaking.
Sources familiar with the plan told Reuters that GM and Lyft will commence the project in 2018. Many analysts are projecting that this new undertaking between the two companies will be the largest of its kind to be launched before 2020. In comparison, Google's Waymo subsidiary is currently testing about 60 autonomous car prototype in four states.
GM's plan is to equip Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles with various self-driving technologies. This fleet of Chevy Bolts will then be used by Lyft in order to test them in the company's ride-hailing business. Sources said that GM has yet to finalize the plan of whether it will sell Bolt autonomous vehicles to the general public.
"We do not provide specific details on potential future products or technology rollout plans," GM announced in its statement released on Friday. We have said that our AV technology will appear in an on-demand ridesharing network application sooner than you might think."
Lyft has yet to release a comment regarding the issue. Motoring experts have been predicted partnerships like this one since last year. Several traditional carmakers and tech companies have partnered up in order to hasten the development of self-driving cars.
In 2016, Google's Waymo division and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have partnered up and converted several Chrysler Pacifica into self-driving minivans. Volvo and ride-sharing service Uber have also joined forces last year, with the former providing self-driving XC90 crossovers and the latter using it in its vast transportation network, according to Motor Trend.
Although several companies have already started developing self-driving cars, most of their timelines for a bigger adoption rollout are past 2020. GM and Lyft did not confirm as to when they plan to roll out their own self-driving cars.
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