“From Argo, we are [in the process of] taking over nearly 100 individuals, and they bring all the operations competencies in the team. They had their own fleet control app and booking platform; this is also coming to us, and a lot of knowledge about safety conditions on U.S. ground and so on, as well as the hub in Austin, which we took over,” Senger defined. “We are really stepping in the [footsteps] of Argo, but with a total different tech setup and a little differentiated business approach.”
In Austin, the corporate will initially use short-wheelbase variations of the ID Buzz electrical minivan imported from Europe for the testing program. They will probably be geared up with the Mobileye know-how stack. Later, the corporate plans to transition to equally geared up long-wheelbase variations of the ID Buzz, like these that may go on sale subsequent 12 months in North America.
“The big aim is that we bring fully autonomous vehicles to the market as a commercial, scalable product,” Senger mentioned. “We want to be partners of the cities. We want to improve mobility in cities, road safety, and we want to be a real alternative to a private car.”
VW has been working experiments with ride-hailing and autonomous variations of these companies in its native Germany for a number of years. But Katrin Lohmann, president of VW ADMT — which stands for Autonomous Driving Mobility and Transport, beneath VW Commercial Vehicles — mentioned U.S. cities current the next potential for the underlying enterprise case than do operations in Europe, the place VW has been experimenting by means of its Moia subsidiary.
“The U.S. is already more mature in terms of ride-hailing,” Lohmann mentioned. “Cities [in the U.S.] are growing and growing, and therefore we think that the overall market potential in the U.S. will be bigger than the market potential in” Europe.
Source: www.autonews.com