Mercedes Promises Self-Driving Taxis in Just Three Years

The already crowded race to put fully self-driving cars on the road just got a bit more congested. Daimler, Mercedes-Benz's parent company, plans to launch a customer-serving, driver-free taxi service in as little as three years, it announced today. The German giant is just the latest to make this kind of pledge. Ford and BMW aim to do the same thing by 2021. General Motors and Google's Waymo are eyeing a similar timeframe without committing to a specific date. Meanwhile, Uber has been shuttling passengers around Pittsburgh in self-driving cars since September (with humans up front to monitor the system).