GM's Cruise starts charging for driverless rides in San Francisco

General Motors Cruise has started charging passengers for driverless ride from San Francisco. 

The company announced on Thursday that it had taken the company took a step toward commercializing the service.

The company started charging riders for rides, marking an important step in the company's plans to grow its services.

Cruise in the month of March became the first business to get an authorization to charge for self-driving vehicle rides within the U.S. city.

Self-driving test vehicles with human safety driver have become an everyday sight throughout San Francisco and completely driverless vehicles are now becoming increasingly popular.

The transformation into a thriving business in a large U.S. city marks a significant milestone in the long delay-filled journey to driverless taxis.

Cruise will keep "expanding our paid service in alignment with the smoothest customer experience possible,".

Cruise currently provides a variety of services during the day in its self-contained vehicles that have safety drivers behind the wheel, to nighttime excursions in fully driverless cars.

Cruise tests driverless, free rides to the public within San Francisco since February.

The price for taking a cruise in one of Cruise's driverless cars will differ in accordance with the length of the trip as well as the time of the day.

Based on an example offered from the firm, a client who takes an 1.3-mile journey will cost $0.90 per mile, and $0.40 for each minute.

In addition, there is the base fee of $5 in addition to a $5 base fee 1.5 percent tax on city taxes which totals $8.72. (By contrast the cost of an Uber taxi for the same journey is at most $10.41.)

Cruise also allows passengers to take a guest to their cruise.

The company's "Cruise -- Driverless Rides" iOS application is now available on the Apple App store. 

It is available via an invitation code to users who had previously signed up for the waitlist that is open to the public. 

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