Thousands of modified Chevrolet Bolt cars may hit the roads next year, as part of a major deployment by General Motors to test its self-driving system on public roads.

GM, along with ridesharing app Lyft, will test the cars and possibly pick up members of the public, similar to Uber’s self-driving program in Pennsylvania and Arizona, according to a report from Reuters.

The program will supposedly be split between Lyft and GM’s car-sharing service, Maven.

The deployment of thousands of self-driving vehicles on public roads may improve the public’s perception of the technology. It could also boost GM’s standing in the self-driving industry, where it is currently perceived as behind Google’s Waymo, Tesla, and Uber.

GM has not commented on the report, Lyft also declined to comment.

GM has made a few major moves to ensure it does not fall behind in the self-driving race, including the near $1 billion acquisition of Cruise Automation, the $500 million paid for a minority stake in Lyft, and new billion dollar research facilities.

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Even with these major investments, GM has yet to show the same levels of progress and sophistication that its self-driving rivals are capable of. It does, however, have a few dozen Chevrolet Bolt cars on San Francisco roads, which are reaching Level 3 autonomy.

GM has not been as detailed in its plans for the future as Ford and Tesla, who have both said they want to achieve Level 4 autonomy in the next few years. This major deployment of test cars could be a signal that GM wants to remove humans from the driving experience, replacing car ownership with rental and taxi services.

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.

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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.

Cadillac previewed the next step in semi-autonomous technology at the New York Auto Show this week, improving its adaptive cruise control safety features.

The new Super Cruise system, which will be available in the Cadillac CT6 this fall, is able to alert the driver when they stop paying attention to the road and ensure that an accident similar to Tesla’s first autonomous fatality doesn’t happen in a Cadillac.

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Instead of packing the steering wheel with sensors to recognize when the driver has let go, Cadillac has added head tracking sensors to make sure the driver pays attention.

The ‘Driver Attention System’ will alert the driver if they look away for too long, and the system has a series of alerts that escalate the longer attention is diverted. These alerts include voice, noise alerts and haptic chair rumbles.

Ignore me and I’ll shut down

If a driver ignores all alerts, the car will turn hazard lights on and shut down. It will also alert the emergency services. Unlike other cruise control systems, the driver needs to only look back at the road to turn off the alerts, they do not need to hold the wheel.

Another addition to Cadillac’s Super Cruise is a geo-locator that ensures cruise control only works on divided, limited-access highways. It comes after the first fatal accident involving a Tesla’s Model S owner that had AutoPilot active last year. The Model S did not recognize the white van that had pulled out of an intersection and the driver was not paying attention to the road.

General Motors is one of the few major automakers that are committed to semi-autonomous tech inside of cars. Ford, its main U.S. rival, has said it will skip Level 3 autonomy, which is considered a slightly more advanced form of cruise control, to push straight for Level 5, the highest level of autonomous driving.