GM says its driverless car could be in fleets by next year

The advent of self-driving cars, the subject of so much fanfare over the last few years from automakers and technology companies, may be just around the corner — at least according to General Motors.

On Friday, GM submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Transportation seeking permission to begin operating fully autonomous cars — without steering wheels or pedals — in a commercial ride-hailing service next year.

The company said the vehicle, the Cruise AV, could be put into production on a standard assembly line once approval was granted by the federal government and states where the cars would operate.

Self-driving technology “is only going to have a big impact if we can deploy it at large scale,” GM’s chief financial officer, Dan Ammann, said in an interview. “We intend to launch a commercial ride-share service at commercial scale in 2019.”

The cars would most likely be used initially in a ride service created by GM, rather than in a service run by an established company like Uber or Lyft, Ammann said.

If approved, the Cruise AVs would probably appear first in San Francisco or Scottsdale, Ariz., where GM’s self-driving subsidiary, Cruise Automation, is conducting tests. In San Francisco, the division has set up a ride-hailing service using about 50 Cruise AVs, although the cars are available only for some of its 250 employees, not public customers.