General Motors to start testing self driving cars in Michigan

General Motors has announced that it will start testing self driving cars in Michigan, US immediately. GM has already been testing the autonomous cars at GM’s Technical Center campus. The cars will be tested on public roads near the GM’s Technical Center, and will expand to tests in the metro area of Detroit in the coming months. GM also announced that they would begin manufacturing autonomous vehicles at the Orion Township plant from early 2017. General Motors Chairman and CEO Mary Barra said, “Revolutionising transportation for our customers while improving safety on roads is the goal of our autonomous vehicle technology, and today’s announcement gets us one step closer to making this vision a reality. Our autonomous technology will be reliable and safe, as customers have come to expect from any of our vehicles.” The autonomous cars will be based on the Bolt electric vehicle model, which is currently being manufactured at the Orion plant. Lidar, cameras and other sensors will all be used to allow the cars to navigate on their own. GM has invested $500 million in Lyft, and has created a dedicated autonomous cars engineering team earlier this year. GM sped up development of its autonomous cars with the acquisition of Cruise Automation earlier this year, to infuse software talent into the team. The announcement follows close on the heels of Uber deploying self driving taxis for testing in San Francisco .