GM to Test Autonomous Cars in New York City

Early next year General Motors Co. will become the first developer to test self-driving cars in New York City.

GM plans to deploy a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars within a five-square-mile section of lower Manhattan, according to Kyle Vogt, CEO of Cruise Automation Inc., the autonomous vehicle software developer GM acquired last year.

Vogt tells The Wall Street Journal that each car will have a human driver on board to take control if necessary. The newspaper says the landmark tests are intended in part to bolster GM’s stature among autonomous car developers.

Waymo, which leads the pack by a wide margin, has accumulated eight years and nearly 4 million miles of on-the-road experience. But testing automated cars amid New York’s congestion and aggressive drivers will “improve our software at a much faster rate” than is possible in more sedate areas such as Silicon Valley, Vogt tells the Journal.

Within the past year GM has dispatched more than 100 self-driving Bolts for tests in San Francisco, Phoenix and metropolitan Detroit. The company unveiled its third-generation Bolt test car last month.