The advent of self-driving cars, the subject of so much fanfare over the last few years from automakers and technology companies, may be just around the corner — at least according to General Motors.

On Friday, G.M. said it had submitted a petition to the United States Department of Transportation seeking permission to begin operating fully autonomous cars — without steering wheels or pedals — in a commercial ride-hailing service next year.

What’s more, the company said the vehicle, the Cruise AV, could be put into production on a standard assembly line once approval was granted by the federal government and states where the cars would operate.

Self-driving technology “is only going to have a big impact if we can deploy it at large scale,” G.M.’s chief financial officer, Dan Ammann, said in an interview. “We intend to launch a commercial ride-share service at commercial scale in 2019. That will begin in one city and scale up in that city and move to other cities after that.”