When and from whom will there be self-driving cars?

General Motors / Lyft

For starters, General Motors is not even trying to sell self-driving cars. Acknowledging the retail cost for early cars will be six figures, GM committed early to ride-sharing deployment by partnering with Lyft.

Short on technological expertise, GM bought a Silicon Valley start-up called Cruise Automation in 2016. Since the acquisition, Cruise has remained relatively separate from GM HQ – for one, employees have not relocated to Detroit – and GM has encouraged the company to keep running as a start-up, except with GM-level resources and 1,100 new employees.

GM has been testing a self-driving version of the Bolt, the company’s electric car, in San Francisco and Arizona i.e. where all self-driving test-drives can be found, as well as metro Detroit.

Where does it rank? 2nd. GM is stacked with go-to-market strategy, production expertise, staying power and distribution. They come up short (mid-80s) in technology, but they are still using the requisite LIDAR technology.

When can you not-drive it? 2018 in Lyft tests. GM has always planned to release their self-driving technology in ride-sharing form and Reuters reports that “thousands” of Bolt AVs will hit the streets in a massive test fleet.

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