autonomous cars

G7 celebrated its 120th anniversary last year. How would you summarise, in a few words, the positioning of the ‘made in France’ taxi service? Yann Ricordel – G7 is a taxi booking centre. We have two types of customers: passengers and drivers, all of whom are self-employed. 40 % of our business relates to journeys…

What will be the first European destination to fully enter the era of autonomous mobility? While Uber is making its move in Germany and Spain, its competitor Bolt is now targeting Luxembourg. With this in mind, the shared mobility specialist has found prime co-pilots: Pony.ai and Stellantis. The three partners…

We were anticipating the launch of autonomous taxis in Germany, as part of an agreement between Uber and Momenta. However, Madrid might just beat Munich to the punch in this race for robotaxis, a race that is struggling to find a winner in Europe. Uber and WeRide unveiled their ambition at the start of June: to trial autonomous vehicles "more…

While we await Uber's arrival on the European rail market, the VTC platform is returning to its traditional core business. An agreement has just been made official with Momenta. The aim of the two partners is to launch autonomous taxis on German roads. The launch is due to take place in 2026 - just ten years after the creation of...

Lyft's ambitions for the European market are becoming clearer by the minute. The acquisition of Freenow, made official last April, promised the VTC platform a solid network on the Old Continent. Now Lyft is sending a promising technological message to European users. Lyft is planning to launch...

Elon Musk is very much involved in politics - and controversy - but he occasionally returns to one of his core businesses: mobility. At the "We, Robot" keynote, the Tesla boss presented two new electric vehicles with great fanfare. Their point...

Faced with a drop in the number of its customers due to the pandemic - particularly with the development of telecommuting - Uber Technologies has sold its self-driving car division to Aurora Innovation, a start-up specialising in autonomous driving. This marks a turning point for Uber, which had been advertising extensively about a future where...

How did a company like Uber deal with this unprecedented crisis? Christophe Peymirat - Our reaction was strong and immediate. During the crisis, we took a courageous stance by asking Uber customers not to use our services in order to flatten the contagion curve by limiting travel. We also used the...

Location-based technology specialist TomTom has just released the results of its Traffic Index, an annual report detailing road traffic conditions in 416 cities in 57 countries. The index is based on the percentage of extra journey time drivers spend stuck in traffic jams....

The mobility of tomorrow is the focus of RATP's attention. After announcing last June a partnership with Airbus and the ADP Group to launch flying taxis during the 2024 Olympics, the group's next initiatives will be in the field of autonomous vehicles. RATP has just...

The launch of the CDG Express, which was due to coincide with the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, has finally been postponed. But business travellers can rest assured that the players in the mobility sector intend to take advantage of the sporting event to make a big splash, and turn the French capital into a laboratory for urban travel....

Autonomous vehicles are not just for Uber and other American giants. The investments made in this field by All Nippon Airways (ANA) over the last few months bear witness to this. After an initial phase of tests in February 2018, the Japanese airline has begun experimenting with an autonomous bus on its...

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's parent company, is officially launching the first commercial autonomous taxi service in Phoenix, Arizona. For the time being, only people who have taken part in the research programme launched by Waymo and those accompanying them will be entitled to use the service. The service, called Waymo One, will initially be limited to...

In an article published on Medium on 23 October, Peter Ondruska, co-founder and CEO of Blue Vision Labs, announced that this British start-up had been acquired by Lyft. Specialising in augmented reality, the company will become part of Lyft's "Level 5" division, responsible for developing autonomous vehicles. Blue Vision Labs has already...

The incident in Tempe (Arizona), where an autonomous Uber vehicle fatally struck a pedestrian in March, has not put an end to the ambitions of the American giant. An agreement signed with Toyota on 27 August has given new impetus to the Uber project. Under the terms of the agreement, the Japanese manufacturer will invest 500 million dollars in its American partner,...

A world first, or at least a French one, is currently taking place at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, with the launch of two autonomous 100% electric shuttles linking Roissypôle RER station, the Maison de l'Environnement and ADP headquarters. An intermediate stop will also serve the Citizen M hotel and...

Drivers want to let go of the wheel. That's what Cetelem found out in a survey on autonomous vehicles, unveiled on 4 January at CES, the global electronics event held from 9 to 12 January. The survey is part of the Observatoire Cetelem de l'Automobile 2018, revealing market trends. It was...

While the first autonomous vehicles are gradually being deployed in major cities, Airbus and Italdesign are working on the next stage of mobility, that of the "third dimension". The two partners presented their vision of the vehicle of the future at the 87th Geneva International Motor Show. The...

Since the end of August, business travellers passing through Singapore have been able to pass a new kind of taxi. On the face of it, there's nothing extraordinary about them: a car, four wheels, nothing but the usual. Except that the driver's seat has been left vacant... Singapore has become the first country to experiment with a taxi service...

The driverless taxi service would make Singapore one of the first countries in the world to offer such a service. The first trials will begin this year, following a partnership signed between the Singapore Land Transport Authority and two private companies, Delphi Automotive Systems and nuTonomy. The taxi shuttles will be controlled by an electronic chip and will be...