General Motors To Grow Its Autonomous Vehicle Manufacturing And Testing

General Motors (GM), which is one of the world’s largest automotive groups, has recently signed the 'SAVE Act' legislation to support autonomous vehicle testing and deployment in Michigan. GM also declared that it will be beginning the expansion through testing of self-driving vehicles on public roads shortly. The company also claimed that it will start the manufacturing of the next-generation autonomous test vehicles at its assembly plant at Orion Township, Michigan in early 2017.

Speaking of the development, Mary Barra, chairman and CEO, General Motors, said, “Revolutionizing transportation for our customers while improving safety on roads is the goal of our autonomous vehicle technology, and this announcement gets us one step closer to making this vision a reality. Our autonomous technology will be reliable and safe, as customers have come to expect from any of our vehicles.”

GM has already started the testing of autonomous vehicles in their Technical Center campus, which is located in Warren, Michigan and in a few months, it will start testing self-driving vehicles in Detroit, which will become its base for engineering autonomous tech in cold weather conditions. The public road testing is also being conducted in San Francisco, California and Scottsdale, Arizona. Earlier this year, in June, GM began testing autonomous Chevrolet Bolt EVs on the public roads in San Francisco and Scottsdale. Also, the company already has more than 40 autonomous vehicles testing in these two cities.

Workers at the Orion Township assembly plant will build test fleet Bolt EVs equipped with fully autonomous technology. The plant currently manufactures the Chevrolet Bolt EV and Sonic. And since the Bolt is already an EV, it will become easier for GM to equip the car with LIDAR, cameras, sensors and other hardware designed to ensure system safety on the roads.