In less than 15 years, one quarter of all U.S. travel could be in shared, electric self-driving vehicles, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group.

The impact will be felt most in cities where over one million people live, as these will be the launch locations for driverless ride-sharing services. Ford CEO Mark Fields has already said the company will launch a ride-sharing platform in cities by 2021.

See Also: SoftBank wants autonomous shuttle on public roads by 2020

Initial public backlash to driverless cars will subside, according to BCG, once the economic argument becomes clear to U.S. commuters. In the study, the researchers said the everyday commuter in Chicago may be able to save $7,000 per year by moving to a self-driving, ride-sharing platform in the future.

“The automotive industry is on the brink of a major transformation, and it’ll be here faster than people realize,” Justin Rose, a BCG partner leading its digital efforts for industrial companies, said in a statement. “For millions of Americans living in large cities, the next vehicle they purchase may be the last car they ever own.”

BCG expects automakers and tech firms to revoke control and ownership of the vehicle in the future, moving instead to a more elongated profit model, ride-sharing. Instead of a one-time, large payment for the car, consumers would pay each time they use the vehicle.

Differing business models

There are different economic models for automakers to choose from. One could be a lease model where the consumer pays to use the car for a certain amount of time; an alternative could see consumers pay for every ride and change cars each time.

BCG has high expectations for the self-driving industry. It expects 4.7 million autonomous cars to replace five million conventional vehicles on the road today, and believes the new driverless vehicles to travel 1.5 trillion kilometers.

It is hard to judge the exact time self-driving cars will become the vehicle of choice for commuters. Infrastructure and regulations could hold automakers back a few years, although the U.S. government and telecommunication providers have both shown interest in expediting the deployment of autonomous vehicles. Most estimates are between 2025 – 2035.

General Motors announced on Thursday a major expansion of its self-driving operations in Silicon Valley.

The automaker intends to hire 1,100 people and double the research and development space available for its self-driving subsidiary, Cruise Automation.

See Also: Automotive 2.0: The new road ahead to autonomous vehicles

GM has, in collaboration with Cruise, been testing 50 Chevrolet Bolt cars in San Francisco, Arizona, and Detroit for over a year. Rumors suggest GM will heavily expand the amount of self-driving vehicles on the road next year, to potentially number in the thousands.

“As autonomous car technology matures, our company’s talent needs will continue to increase,” said Cruise Automation’s CEO, Kyle Vogt. “Accessing the world-class talent pool that the San Francisco Bay Area offers is one of the many reasons we plan to grow our presence in the state.”

GM following Ford?

The expansion comes a few weeks after Ford, its main competitor in the U.S., announced a $1 billion investment in Argo AI, to be sent over the next five years. The investment gives Ford access to a talent-filled startup working on all sorts of autonomous technology.

General Motors has not set a clear roadmap for its self-driving program, unlike Ford, which wants to have a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021. Both automakers are likely to launch ride-sharing services for the self-driving cars, GM may use Lyft as the default service.

Other competitors, including Waymo and Tesla, want to see self-driving cars on the road earlier, but lack the manufacturing (Waymo) and distribution (Tesla) prowess of GM and Ford.

Apple’s secretive self-driving project has received a permit to test driverless vehicles in California, which could be our first preview of the iPhone maker’s autonomous technology.

The self-driving tech has been in development, under the codename Project Titan, for a few years. During that time, the project has supposedly moved from a hardware, software, and services package to a more software oriented project.

See Also: Detroit passes Silicon Valley as center for self-driving research

Apple has registered three Lexus RX vehicles and six drivers, which does give some credence to the reports of it focusing primarily on software. The permit does not disclose what sensors the company plans to use.

All companies registered with the California’s DMV have to file disengagement and crash reports every month, this could be our first insight into the sophistication of Apple’s tech.

Apple technically isn’t even working on a car?

Apple has still not publicly acknowledged it is working on a self-driving vehicle and declined to comment on the permit.

It said in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it is “investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation,” which looks like the closest we’re going to get to a confirmation until near launch.

The company will join a growing list of tech firms testing autonomous vehicles in California, including Waymo (Google’s self-driving division), Tesla, General Motors (with Cruise Automation) and Uber.

Baidu is opening its self-driving vehicle platform in a bid to help drive the development of autonomous cars.

The Chinese internet giant today announced its Apollo project that will see its platform, including vehicle platform, hardware platform, software platform and cloud data services, opened to help others in the industry, particularly car manufacturers, to develop autonomous vehicles.

The initial target is to open the technologies up for vehicles in restricted environments this July. Baidu said it then plans to share technology for simple urban road conditions before the end of the year, with the ultimate goal of opening its full tech stack — covering fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads — by 2020.

“AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles,” Qi Lu, the former Microsoft exec who recently became Baidu group president and COO, said in a statement.

Beyond offering up its platform and technologies, which the company has invested significant sums into, Baidu said it is also looking to add partners to the program to strengthen it, particularly around compatible vehicles, sensors, and other components. Baidu has partnerships with Chinese companies such as BAIC Motor, BYD and Chery, while a two-year relationship with BMW petered out last year over apparent differences in strategy.

This move to open source much of its self-driving tech seems like a move to gain a leg-up on more developed competitors such as Google and Tesla.

Baidu was one of the first major tech companies to embrace artificial intelligence and machine learning, and its autonomous vehicle push began with road testing in Beijing in 2015. Last November, it offered test rides to attendees of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, and the Chinese company also has a permit to test in California, which is where its research labs — including its AI division — is based. Baidu recently lost the head of that project, renowned AI expert Andrew Ng, after he announced the end of his three year stay at the company, but its AI group nevertheless employs around 1,300 people, with 300 of those in the Baidu Research division. That makes it one of the largest units of its kind in tech.

Google has acquired a significant piece of land in Nevada, near Reno and Tesla’s Gigafactory site, which will house a future data center, and could also prove host to a testing track for Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous driving company. The purchase of the 1,210 acres in Nevada’s Tahoe Reno Industrial Center was reported by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, and follows the filing of documents detailing the transaction late last week.

The purchase of land doesn’t mean Google is breaking ground on a new data center immediately; the report says there aren’t any plans in the books to start construction right away. But with increasing emphasis on its cloud-based business, it’s unlikely the company will sit idle on plans to build new data center infrastructure for long.

More interesting might be the WSJ’s assertion that several people suggested Google might use the site as a future testing facility for Waymo’s autonomous vehicles. Nevada is in the process of passing legislation that could see it eventually allow self-driving tests with potentially fewer restrictions than are in place for testing in California, which might make it a good site for high-speed testing of vehicles, above the 35 MPH cap currently in place in Google’s home state.

The theory that Google could use the land for testing of vehicles is based mostly on the regulatory conditions in Nevada, and its co-backing of the bill currently making its way through the legislative process, as well as the fact that the parcel of land is much larger than would be required for any single data center. Still, it’s an interesting possibility, and one that makes sense if Waymo wants to continue expanding its real-world testing capabilities.