Volkswagen, Mobileye, which is a division of Intel Corp., and Champion Motors will deploy what they claim will be the first self-driving, ride-hailing service in Israel, starting next year.
The companies will establish a joint venture for the project, called New Mobility in Israel, that will be the global beta testing for the mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) business model.
Volkswagen will provide the electric vehicles while Mobileye will provide its Level 4 autonomous vehicle kit comprised of hardware, driving policy, safety software and map data. Champion Motors will run the fleet operations and control center. The three companies will add mobility and services, content and other MaaS tools for deployment of the ride-hailing service.
The companies are working with the government of Israel to provide legal and regulatory support, share infrastructure and traffic data and provide access to infrastructure as needed. The project is slated to begin in 2019 and scale to commercialization by 2022. The project will be rolled out in phases, with several dozen self-driving vehicles on the road initially and ramping up to hundreds by the time commercialization takes place.
"We firmly believe that self-driving electric vehicles will offer Israel and cities around the world safe, clean and emission-free mobility, which is accessible and convenient,” said Herbert Diess, CEO of the Volkswagen Group.
