Cruise, a majority-owned subsidiary of General Motors, has began testing self-driving autos with out driver screens in San Francisco, the corporate stated Wednesday.

The California-based firm plans to start testing a handful of autos, adopted by a “very methodical and accountable” ramp-up throughout San Francisco, in accordance with Cruise CEO Dan Ammann. He stated the testing marks the primary use of the allow in a significant U.S. metropolis.

“What this represents for Cruise and, I feel, the self-driving business extra usually is you are seeing absolutely driverless know-how out of the R&D part and into the start of the journey to being an actual industrial product,” he informed reporters on a name Wednesday. “I feel that is extremely thrilling and a major milestone on the general journey.”

Whereas the autos is not going to have people within the driver’s seats, Cruise plans to keep up a security operator within the passenger seat in the course of the starting of the testing, in accordance with Cruise spokesman Ray Wert.

“The protection operator has the power to convey the car to a cease within the occasion of an emergency, however doesn’t have entry to straightforward driver controls,” he stated in an electronic mail to CNBC. “Finally, this security operator shall be absolutely eliminated.”

The commercialization of self-driving vehicles has been far longer than most thought it could be even a couple of years in the past. Regardless of important hype on Wall Avenue and corporations, together with Cruise, promising driverless ride-hailing fleets by or round now, Alphabet’s Waymo stays the one firm working self-driving autos for public use in Arizona.

Ammann declined to say when the corporate plans to launch a industrial autonomous car enterprise for passengers or cargo, citing “there’s much more to return subsequent yr.” He stated the corporate’s progress shall be “rather more seen and tangible from right here.”

“I feel subsequent yr goes to be a reasonably thrilling yr,” Ammann stated, citing the take a look at autos are anticipated to finally be a part of an worker take a look at program earlier than public use.

Cruise final yr delayed the launch of a industrial, self-driving car service in San Francisco, which it had anticipated to deploy in 2019. The corporate has persistently stated the launch timing can be guided by security. Ammann reiterated that place Wednesday.

The brand new testing comes lower than two months after Cruise received a permit from the California Division of Motor Autos to take away the human backup drivers from its self-driving vehicles. Others reminiscent of Waymo, Autox Applied sciences, Nuro and Amazon’s Zoox acquired such a allow earlier than Cruise.

Cruise has pushed greater than 2 million miles over the previous 5 years and invested a number of billions of {dollars} within the operations, in accordance with Ammann. GM is majority proprietor of Cruise with with Honda Motor and Softbank.