Countries around the world are encouraging the development of autonomous technologies, and Singapore, with its limited land and workforce, is hoping driverless vehicles will encourage its residents to use more shared vehicles and public transport.
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Commuters will be able to book a ride to areas within the one-north business district, where nuTonomy has been conducting tests of its vehicles since April, as well as nearby neighbourhoods.
During the trial period, a nuTonomy safety driver and support engineer will ride in each test vehicle to observe system performance, and to ensure passenger safety and comfort. Enter, Uber’s SE Asian rival Grab which seemed confident to outdo the American ride-hailing giant and the Singapore-based firm nuTonomy which had beaten all the tech and automobile firms (just before Uber!) to publicly test self-driving cars. If a trip requires travel on roads outside of one-north, the safety driver will take control of the vehicle for that portion of the trip, they said. Though slower than nuTonomy, the area covered was far larger as it covers the whole city. “At this point, the partnership is focused on Singapore – though there may be other potential synergies between nuTonomy and Grab that we could decide to explore in the future”.
“We will be combining nuTonomy’s self-driving vehicle software with Grab’s app, with their proven fleet routing technology and their mapping capabilities”, said nuTonomy CEO Karl Iagnemma.
According to Grab’s traffic data, drivers here are less likely to accept passengers requesting a ride from or to locations such as Jurong Island, Lim Chu Kang and Tuas.
“Partnering with Grab to expand our public trial in Singapore will yield valuable feedback and consumer insights as nuTonomy readies our on-demand self-driving vehicle service for commercial launch in 2018”, said Karl Iagnemma, co-founder and chief executive of Cambridge, Mass. -based nuTonomy.
EDB has invested in nuTonomy.
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It hopes to introduce a fully commercial self-driving “robo” taxi fleet by 2018.
