Self-driving taxis might become a reality in as little as two years, if a Boston-area startup gets its way.

NuTonomy, founded by a pair of MIT scientists in 2013, has just closed on a $16 million series A funding round led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from other investors including Singapore’s economic development group and Fontinalis Partners. The round follows an earlier $3.6 million that was raised seed funding earlier this year.

NuTonomy plans to start testing its self-driving taxis in Singapore later this year. For its pilot tests, the startup is going to use retrofitted electric cars made by Japanese auto maker Mitsubishi, which is not surprisingly also heavily invested in self-driving car research. A report in DigitalTrends suggests that this could be the real deal, because NuTonomy has already established a close working with the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). That relationship is bearing fruit, with NuTonomy making “great strides” in selling the concept of self-driving cars to the city state. Indeed, NuTonomy has had a presence in Singapore for some time, having first tested self-driving golf carts that can be summoned using a mobile app, in the city back in 2014.

The SMART group’s backing is also important, because it’s been involved in a number of other technology initiatives in Singapore. As well as driverless cars, SMART is working on projects to boost security in the city state, introduce cashless wallets, and support local entrepreneurship. As for the self-driving taxi plan, another component of this involves redesigning roads especially for driverless cars.

Singapore is a country that’s more open to technology than others. The country has already begun a process of legalizing ride-sharing services like Uber and GrabTaxi, and NuTonomy says it hopes to begin deploying its self-driving taxis as early as 2018, according to Co-founder and CEO Karl Iagnemma, who gave an interview with the Boston Business Journal.

“This field has been moving so quickly and we want to make sure we can move even faster as a startup,” Iagnemma said. “We’re going to be racking up a ton of miles in urban centers like Singapore, and the more miles you drive the more you can uncover bugs in your software and things you can do better.”

Image credit: NuTonomy