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Another self-driving rideshare service is coming to Austin

Cruise LLC intends to launch its services in Austin and Phoenix later this year.

AUSTIN, Texas — If you're not a fan of chatty rideshare drivers, you may soon be in luck. Another self-driving rideshare service is primed to launch in Austin later this year.

Cruise LLC – a self-driving rideshare company backed by Honda and General Motors – plans to launch its services soon in both Austin and Phoenix, according to a Sept. 12 tweet from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.

"Our team is going from zero footprint in Austin (no test vehicles or maps) to driverless rides in ~90 days," Vogt said. "We’ve been prepping for scaling the last couple years, glad to see that work paying off."

This expansion comes a little over three months after Cruise announced it had received the first-ever driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission to start offering paid rides in San Francisco.

RELATED: Self-driving Lyft rides to start soon in Austin

The Austin Business Journal (ABJ) reports that while the expansion will be Cruise's first foray into Austin, the company has been operating a self-driving delivery service with Walmart for months and has made around 10,000 deliveries.

Cruise is not the first company to send self-driving cars out onto Austin's streets. Back in 2015, ABJ reports that Waymo was the first to test computer-driven vehicles in the Capital City. 

Last year, Ford, Lyft and Argo AI announced a partnership to bring a fleet of self-driving vehicles to Austin. The group now has about 20 self-driving cars on Austin streets, but right now, it still has a testing specialist in each car's driver's seat. Learn more.

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