General Motors to roll out fleet of self-driving taxis by 2019, ahead of Ford, Uber, and Waymo

General Motors to roll out fleet of self-driving taxis by 2019, ahead of Ford, Uber, and Waymo

On Thursday, General Motors (GM) executives said the company plans to deploy a large-scale fleet of driverless taxis in large cities by 2019—making it among the first autonomous car developers to provide a timeline to their efforts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While Ford, Waymo, Uber, and other auto and tech companies have been testing autonomous cars, taxis, and trucks, most have avoided naming a date for official commercial launches.

GM executives expect that the planned autonomous taxi additions will net large profits: While GM earned a profit margin of 7.5% on its $166 billion in annual revenue in 2016, by 2025, a driverless car service could offer 20-30% profit margins and a "total addressable market of several hundreds of billions of dollars," CFO Chuck Stevens said at an investor conference, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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