General Motors has manufactured the first set of 130 Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles equipped with self-driving technology at its Orion Assembly Plant in Michigan.
These vehicles will join a fleet of 50 self-driving Bolt EVs already deployed across San Francisco; Scottsdale, Arizona; and metro Detroit.
As per the American automaker, the electric vehicles which offer an EPA-estimated 238 miles per charge with a price below $30,000 after government incentives, with self-driving capabilities, feature an array of equipment, including LiDAR, cameras, sensors and other hardware designed to deploy safe and reliable fully autonomous vehicles in the near future.
General Motors chairman and CEO Mary Barra said: “Today, new technologies and changing customer needs are helping us transform personal mobility and deliver new transportation solutions that are safer, more sustainable and better than ever.
“We believe one of the best ways to deliver these solutions is through greater access to self-driving electric vehicles deployed in sharing networks.”
General Motors and Cruise Automation engineers have been testing Chevrolet Bolt EVs equipped with self-driving technology on public roads since June 2016 in San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona and in Warren, Michigan since January 2017
Barra added: “Expansion of our real-world test fleet will help ensure that our self-driving vehicles meet the same strict standards for safety and quality that we build into all of our vehicles.”
“To get to this future, we at GM are pursuing both an evolutionary path – with technologies such as automatic emergency braking and Super Cruise – and a revolutionary path, and the clearest evidence is the state-of-the-art autonomous vehicles you see here today.”
Cruise Automation CEO Kyle Vogt said: “To achieve what we want from self-driving cars, we must deploy them at scale.
"By developing the next-generation self-driving platform in San Francisco and manufacturing these cars in Michigan, we are creating the safest and most consistent conditions to bring our cars to the most challenging urban roads that we can find.”
In April, the automaker announced that it will invest $14m in new research and development facility, while adding more than 1100 new jobs to expand its Cruise Automation self-driving operations in California.
