Taxi-hailing platform Grab has teamed up with a software startup in Singapore to allow its customers to book and trial autonomous vehicles in one area in the city-state.

Singapore-based Grab is working with nuTonomy, which developed two driverless cars and has been testing them since April, to offer free trial rides. The startup aims to have 12 taxis on the road by the end of the year, the Straits Times reported. It is targeting 100 by the end of 2018.

The trial service is offered as “Robo-Car” on Grab’s app and was launched last Friday. But with only two cars available, rides need to be scheduled in advance and only one passenger is allowed. A safety driver and support engineer ride in each car, according to the app.

nuTonomy Singapore operations manager Cody Kamin said at a press conference there are no specific geographic boundaries for the cars to operate within. But the firm is likely to reject destinations too far away from the designated area, which originally was a 6km stretch of roads, approved by the authorities as a test bed for autonomous vehicles, but that was doubled last week, the Times said.

The one-year partnership with Grab, which expands its public trial launched on 25 August in Singapore, is aimed at collecting information to improve the performance and safety of nuTonomy’s self-driving cars, as well as refining Grab’s routing technology and mapping for the vehicles, the companies said.

The announcement comes days after Grab rival Uber introduced self-driving vehicles in the US.

Meanwhile, Apple and Google’s self-driving car initiatives have been hit by staff departures, setbacks and rethinks.

Grab, which claims a 95 per cent market share in taxi-hailing services in Southeast Asia, announced last week it raised $750 million from investors, including Japan’s SoftBank, to expand its services in Southeast Asia at a time when Uber has been pulling back in the region.