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

General Motors' announced yesterday that it plans to introduce an autonomous ride-sharing service to several big cities in 2019. The target is two years ahead of the automaker's closest rival, Ford, which plans to roll out a similar product in 2021.

Outlining its vision during an investors call from San Francisco, where it allowed journalists to ride in prototype vehicles earlier this week, the company said it would aim for ''zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion'' enabled by a system entirely controlled by GM, starting with assembly line production all the way to deployment using its own ride-hailing service.

''We think this represents one of the biggest business opportunities of all time, since the creation of the Internet,'' Dan Ammann, GM's president and chief of autonomous vehicle strategy, told investors.

Under the plan GM will create autonomous vehicles that can drive more safely than humans, roll out the cars at scale in dense urban centres with ''complex environments,'' and integrate them with software that users could use to request rides on-demand at a significantly cheaper cost then competitors like Uber and Lyft, according to GM.

''This business is potentially bigger than our current core business,'' chief financial officer Chuck Stevens told the group.

GM said it is important to be first to get the self-driving electric vehicles on the road to allow quick improvement of driver experience to give the company a competitive advantage. GM added that there was still much more difficult engineering work to be done. Also it is not quite clear yet whether the automaker will be first.

Delphi, an automotive supplier, said it expects its autonomous system to power commercial vehicles in limited areas in 2019. Delphi recently bought autonomous software startup NuTonomy and would also partner with BMW AG, chipmaker Intel Corp and camera and visual recognition software maker Mobileye.