General Motors will self driving ride sharing service with electric cars in 2019

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General Motors plans to introduce an autonomous ride-sharing service to several big cities in 2019.

GM outlined its vision to reinvent itself. GM wants a future with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion.

GM sells 2.7 million cars a year and sodl 150,000 electric vehicles. GM has the Bolt electric car.

GM bought self-driving startup Cruise in 2016. The GM self driving division went from a staff of 90 in 2016 to 1,200 today and will be 2100 in 2018. GM hired Uber’s CTO, Netflix’s chief HR officer and Google’s head of mapping operations.

GM says it can reduce the average cost of ride-sharing services from roughly $2-3 a mile to “well under” $1 a mile by 2025 with in-house production of LIDAR sensors and battery cells. GM cars will help create the world’s largest internet of things platform.

“Transportation as a service penetration is in the very early stages,” Ammann said. “Ride-share is only 0.1% of all U.S. miles driven. We still have 99.9% of the opportunity in front of us.”

Nevertheless, GM has been making progress with its computerized simulations that will ensure passenger safety, the company said. Up to 150 simulations are run per minute, according to Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, and the company has deployed 180 test vehicles throughout San Francisco and the Phoenix suburbs that will reach 1 million miles of on-road testing per month by early 2018. Cruise and GM’s confidence is such that they launched a beta version of its ride-hailing app for employees to test the service. “We have people in San Francisco that use this app as their primary form of transportation,” Vogt said.