General Motors has stated that the Lyft ride-sharing service, where it invested half a billion dollars, will use its 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV in a pilot program for self-driving taxis to be released as early as next year.
As per an article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, Lyft will offer clients the alternative of riding in the prototype autonomous Bolt EV when they ask for a trip through its app.
The company didn’t cited the name of the city where the pilot program would be conducted.
General Motors has previously said the Bolt EV would be perfect for car-sharing and similar services, due to its large cabin– which has the traveler volume of a midsize sedan, compact size and low running expenses.
The firm expects the drivers of such services to be among the Bolt EV’s buyers when the electric car goes on sale at the end of this year or the start of 2017.
The Uber ride-sharing service is bigger than Lyft, and Uber– along with Google’s longtime self-driving car research study and electric-car maker Tesla Motors– is anticipated to compete in the self-driving automobile area.
The report comes during a time in which Silicon Valley firms, Tesla amongst them, are pressing the world’s established automakers to move more aggressively into self-driving automobiles and other technology-based reinnovations of what an automobile can be.
The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV is expected to carry a base price of $37,500 prior to incentives and provide an EPA-rated variety of 200 miles or more when it is on sale within a year.
