General Motors along with its new partner Lyft plan to test a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Bolt taxis on public roads within one year.
The service will be tested with real customers, who can choose to opt in or out of the pilot program when hailing a car using the Lyft app. Other details are still being worked out, while the city where the testing will take place has also not been disclosed.
Earlier this year, GM poured a $500 million investment into the ride-sharing company Lyft and also bought Cruise Automation, a tech company working on self-driving cars for about $1 billion. Cruise will provide the hardware, while Lyft will allow people to access these new electric, self-driving cars. When the Bolt hits the market, it will also be available to Lyft drivers to rent while driving for the service.
SEE ALSO: GM Invests $500M in Lyft to Develop On-Demand Self-Driving Car Network
To conform with current regulations and to keep passengers comfortable there will be a driver in the driver’s seat ready to intervene if needed.
“We will want to vet the autonomous tech between Cruise, GM and ourselves and slowly introduce this into markets,” Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft’s product director, told the That way, it will “ensure that cities would have full understanding of what we are trying to do here.”
[Source: Wall Street Journal]
