General Motors Co’s self-driving unit, Cruise has announced it is delaying the commercial deployment of cars past its target of 2019 as more testing of the vehicles is required.
GM Cruise chief executive officer Dan Ammann said the company will be testing in San Francisco.
Reuters reports that the company will be working with Honda and General Motors to develop purpose-built autonomous vehicles.
Ammann has not said when the company now expects to deploy a ride-hailing service using self-driving vehicles. According to Reuters the GM Cruise said that it had earlier hoped to deploy such a service by the end of 2019, but in April, GM Chief Executive Mary Barra declined to repeat that goal.
Cruise has reportedly raised $7.25 billion during the past year from investors including SoftBank, Honda Motor Co and investment firm T. Rowe Price.
According to Reuters Cruise’s decision to formally postpone deployment of self-driving cars this year comes as rival autonomous vehicle companies and automakers acknowledge it will take more time and money than they had expected to make autonomous vehicles safe for unrestricted use on public roads.
