GM Bringing Self-Driving Cars to NYC For Street Trials

Sentinel out, pedestrians: Self-driving cars are headed to the streets of New York City.

GM's Cruise Automation team is in the process of applying to be the start to test fully autonomous vehicles in the country, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appear Tuesday. The tests are expected to brainstorm in a geofenced surface area of Manhattan in early 2022.

The Silicon Valley-based firm, which GM acquired in March 2022 for $1 billion, has as well been testing its democratic driving tech on roads in San Francisco, Arizona, and Michigan. During its upcoming tests in Manhattan, there volition be an engineer in the driver'southward seat to "monitor and evaluate performance," and a second person in the passenger seat.

In a statement, Cruise Automation's CEO Kyle Vogt said the NYC trials will "advance the timeline to deploying self-driving cars at calibration."

"New York City is one of the nearly densely populated places in the globe and provides new opportunities to expose our software to unusual situations, which means we can improve our software at a much faster rate," Vogt said.

News of the upcoming tests comes subsequently Audi in June performed New York'due south first autonomous vehicle demo.

Cruise's upcoming trials will represent first time Level four democratic vehicles are tested in the state, Cuomo said. The SAE International standard defines automated driving based on six levels of adequacy, ranging from zero (no automation) to 5 (full automation). Level iv (loftier automation) means the vehicle can handle all driving tasks in almost situations, with possible exceptions during inclement weather or unusual driving environments, where a driver would exist required to take over.

"New York is the ultimate proving ground for autonomous vehicle technology," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said in a statement. "We take a streetscape that is unrivaled in its scale and complexity, and then it'southward fitting that General Motors and Cruise Automation are finally bringing this technology hither for testing and development."

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag'south expert on fitness and smart home products. Teaching yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, force training machines, treadmills, and more. Angela also tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, simply to name a few.