The Cruise AV is designed to operate safely on its own, with no driver, steering wheel, pedals or other manual controls when it goes on the road in 2019.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and General Motors (GM) are stepping up their autonomous vehicle (AV) development efforts, through a partnership with Waymo and a multi-billion fund raise respectively.

FCA will provide Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Google parent Alphabet, with up to 62,000 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans later this year.

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The Italian-American company is also in discussions to licence Waymo’s technology for its own cars, with the view to retail FCA-manufactured AVs to the public.

The two companies have been collaborating since 2016, using the Pacifica as FCA’s main test vehicle for self-driving.

General Motors, meanwhile, saw its Cruise AV development arm receive a $2.5bn (€2.1bn, £1.8bn) investments from Softbank, the Japanese telecoms and technology conglomerate.

Around $900m will be erogated during development phase, with the rest being made available once GM’s vehicles are ready for commercial deployment, ideally in 2019.

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GM intends to funnel another $1.1bn into the unit once the transaction with Softbank has been closed. The investment round puts Cruise’s valuation at $11.5bn.

Michael Ronen, managing partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “GM has made significant progress toward realizing the dream of completely automated driving to dramatically reduce fatalities, emissions and congestion.”

“The GM Cruise approach of a fully integrated hardware and software stack gives it a unique competitive advantage. We are very impressed by the advances made by the Cruise and GM teams, and are thrilled to help them lead a historic transformation of the automobile industry.”