The driverless cab concept is expanding in Asia. A Grab and NuTonomy partnership is to operate a driverless taxi business in a district of Singapore. Grab, a Southeast Asia ride-hailing business has partnered up with Singapore company nuTonomy. The latter started up a ride-hailing driverless cab business in Singapore in August.
The Grab and nuTonomy partnership involves Grab users using the app to order nuTonomy driverless cabs. The term ‘driverless’ is euphemistic because there will be backup drivers present to take over should it be necessary. This is yet another entry into driverless cab and car field as the technology steps up worldwide.
As yet, there has not been an unqualified success, and truly driverless cars are as yet not permitted generally on public roads. Ride-hail firm Uber has been working with Swedish auto manufacturer Volvo, trialing since August in Pittsburg. These also involved a backup driver in case the technology fails. Lyft recently hooked up with General Motors, predicting truly driverless cabs, without a back-up driver, within 5 years.
A limited public trial in Singapore was started by nuTonomy in August. The company stated that it hopes to have up to 100 truly autonomous taxicabs on the roads in Singapore by 2018. Its partnership with Grab will enable it to combine Grab’s hailing app technology with nuTonomy’s taxi service. The plan is for a fleet of cabs, driven by nuTonomy software, to be available through the Grab app.
A number of automobile manufacturing companies are working on the driverless cab concept and on autonomous cars. Most prominent are Ford, Volvo and troubled Tesla, who may have gone a step too far too quickly. Tesla is recovering and its problems have helped the firm to correct some faults, not all in engineering but also in marketing and sales.
China is also pushing the driverless cab concept and autonomous cars. Let’s also not forget the Google car on which Google has spent years of development. Google is also pressing for legislators in the USA to change the legal framework to cater for driverless cars. The Grab and NuTonomy partnership is a further step forward in driverless cab technology.
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