A fleet of approximately 100 robotaxis are coming to an undisclosed American city next year.
- Mobileye plans to launch a robotaxi service in America next year.
- Fleet of around 100 vehicles will serve a major metropolitan market.
- If everything goes smoothly, company could field 17,000 robotaxis.
The robotaxi wars are heating up as Mobileye has announced plans to launch its own autonomous ride-hailing business. This is an interesting development as the company is making the jump from supplier to fleet operator.
Mobileye says it will launch a robotaxi service in a “major metropolitan U.S. market” next year. The company aims to have an initial fleet of approximately 100 vehicles and an illustration suggests they’ll be crossovers equipped with a roof-mounted sensor pod as well as sensors in the front and rear fenders.
The company will apparently take a cautious approach to “validate the operational model under fully driverless conditions.” If the initial rollout is a success, Mobileye plans to deploy approximately 17,000 robotaxis over the following five years.
While there are more questions than answers at this point, the robotaxi will use Mobileye Drive as well as Moovit’s Mobility Platform. They’ll be joined by “consumer-facing applications, multi-modal trip planning, AV mission control, fleet-management technologies, and integration with teleoperation infrastructure.”
Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua said, “As interest in autonomous mobility accelerates, the industry has become increasingly dependent on a small number of technology providers and business models. We believe there is an opportunity for a new approach – one built on deep autonomous-driving expertise, strong industry partnerships, and proven capabilities across the mobility ecosystem.”
The company said it remains committed to supplying Mobileye Drive to automakers, mobility operators, and other customers even though they’re launching their own robotaxi service. They added the effort provides a “complementary path to market that can accelerate deployment, generate operational learnings, and further demonstrate the capabilities of the Mobileye Drive platform at scale.”
Additional information will be released at a Capital Markets Day event later this year, but Mobileye said they’ll be working with “AV-ready vehicle platform manufacturers.” This suggests their upcoming robotaxi will be based on an existing off-the-shelf vehicle.
While Ford and GM have thrown in the towel on robotaxis, there’s no shortage of competition from Tesla, Amazon’s Zoox, and Google’s Waymo. Uber is also betting big on robotaxis and has plans for up to 50,000 models based on the Rivian R2 as well as others built on the Lucid Gravity.
