Mobileye, a division of Intel Corp., gave a peek inside the self-driving car technology it has been working on with a new video of a vehicle driving autonomously through busy streets in Jerusalem, Israel.
In the video, the autonomous vehicle equipped with Mobileye technology is shown to be driving along a busy street with little to no roadway markings, multiple pedestrians crossing intersections and other oncoming vehicles.
Mobileye is working to develop a ride-hailing business in Israel with its Pinta pilot that was announced last year. Pinta is a partnership with Volkswagen and Champion Motors that will be a global beta testing project for the mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) business model for robo-taxis. The company is looking to begin operations of the robotaxi service beginning in 2022.
Meanwhile, Mobileye has announced a new long-term cooperation agreement with France’s state-owned public transport operator Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP Group) to deploy autonomous transportation solutions based on Mobileye’s AV technology. The goal is to bring a joint offering for a robotaxi shuttle fleet globally with testing set to begin in Paris in 2020.
Intel estimates that the market for robotaxis will reach $160 billion by 2030.
Mobileye said it sees new revenue streams coming from the use of data mapping systems that can be used for both advanced driving assistant systems (ADAS) and smart city management. Mobileye is already running automatic map creation for BMW, Volkswagen, Nissan and three other OEMs to provide fresh maps of world data. Mobileye predicts the European Union will be fully mapped by 2020 and the majority of the U.S. before year-end 2020.
Mobileye is just one of numerous companies exploring the use of robotaxis worldwide. Chinese vendor Pony.ai started a project for robotaxi service in Guangzhou, China, and obtained a permit to test in California earlier this year. Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv created a joint venture to develop a self-driving robotaxi and are investing $4 billion with the goal of having vehicles up and running by 2020. The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance formed an agreement with Waymo for self-driving taxis and deliveries in France and Japan. Waymo has been testing its autonomous vehicles for a number of years and surpassed more than 10 million miles of public road testing. The company has been gearing up to start its own self-driving robotaxis in Arizona and has started testing in California after receiving a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
