NuTonomy Beats Uber in Race to Put On Demand Autonomous Vehicles on City Streets

August 25, 2016 – A three-year old company spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched a self-driving taxi service in Singapore today. It represents the first public trial of this type beating Uber to the punch. The latter had announced recently a late August introduction of a venture with Volvo to put a fleet of autonomous taxis on the streets of Pittsburgh.

nuTonomy, the software company offering its Singapore on demand taxi service uses a mobile app that residents can download. They can then hail a self-driving car, modified Mitsubishi iMievs and Renault Zoes. The cars will be autonomous but the company has an engineer riding shotgun to act as both a monitor and fail safe should something go wrong. Throughout the public trial nuTonomy will be looking at the data it collects to help it improve the service from booking rpocess to passenger experience. For the moment the area of coverage is Singapore’s one-north business district.

The Uber Pittsburgh trial will use its existing mobile app. Passengers will hail a driverless car and experience the trip for free. The vehicles in this test will have a safety driver on board to serve a similar purpose to the one on board nuTonomy’s taxis. The Uberized Volvos will be equipped with a table computer for passenger use. They will be able to follow the car’s progress and receive an explanation of what is happening. In early testing Uber found out that its autonomous vehicle system didn’t like bridges and Pittsburgh has 500 of them. That could be a bit of a challenge.

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