Yes, everyone is joining the self-driving-car bandwagon. This time around we see GM and Lyft joining the party. The plan is that General Motors partners with Lyft to “deploy thousands of self-driving electric cars in test fleets”, beginning next year, according to a Reuter’s report.

Several others have started to build and deploy autonomous vehicles, including Alphabet, Tesla and Ford (and many many others). However this deployment is predicted to be the largest test of fully autonomous vehicles before 2020. Just for comparison, Alphabet (Google’s parent) is only sending about 60 prototypes on the road at the moment.

While there isn’t plans to make it commercially available, yet; the cars that will be used in the deployment is said to be Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle. it will primarily be tested in ride sharing fleets in a few US states. Although GM execs have mentioned in interviews that “they intend to mass-produce autonomous vehicles and deploy them in ride services fleets”; GM has not officially announced it, but Reuters managed to get some loose tongues talking.

In a statement, GM said: “We do not provide specific details on potential future products or technology rollout plans. We have said that our AV technology will appear in an on-demand ride sharing network application sooner than you might think.” Lyft declined to comment.

Just a few days ago we reported that Ford was looking at making their self-driving cars for commercial application by 2021. According to an interview done by Reuters with GM executive Mike Ableson, “GM’s Maven car sharing operation likely will be involved with Lyft in developing a commercial ride sharing business around self-driving vehicles such as the Bolt AV.”

“If you assume the cost of these autonomous vehicles, the very early ones, will be six figures, there aren’t very many retail customers that are willing to go out and spend that kind of money,” Ableson said. “But even at that sort of cost, with a ride sharing platform, you can build a business.”

To make that business successful requires the ability to engineer autonomous systems, to build self-driving vehicles in volume and to deploy them in a ride sharing fleet. “If you take those three things, no one company has all three,” Ableson said.

GM acquired San Francisco startup Cruise Automation in early 2016, to help accelerate development of self-driving cars. GM also launched a car sharing business, Maven, which has provided vehicles to Lyft.