Cruise Will Soon Hit San Francisco With No Hands on the Wheel

Last week, Waymo, the self-driving vehicle developer owned by Alphabet, expanded a first-of-its-kind service offering rides to paying passengers around Phoenix--with no one behind the wheel. Videos shared by Waymo and others show its minivans navigating wide, sunny streets with ease. Now rival Cruise, a General Motors subsidiary, has taken a step towards running its own self-driving taxi service--on the hilly, winding, pedestrian-swarmed streets of San Francisco. On Thursday, Cruise said the California Department of Motor Vehicles had granted it a permit to test up to five of its modified Chevy Bolts without anyone behind the wheel. In a blog post, Cruise CEO Dan Ammann said truly driverless cars would operate in the city before the end of the year.