Today’s post comes from Barak Sas, Managing Director of Mobility Business, a consultancy focused on innovation, growth and autonomy in the mobility industry.
The current single use passenger buses need to be replaced with something more flexible and multi purpose passengers and logistics to have that extra revenue opportunities to make passenger services more affordable and economically viable that current bus services just can't do. Making a bus Autonomous isn't a fix all to our overall transport and congestion problems.
Unfortunately public procurement is not embracing innovation to meet our needs for the 21st-Century 20th-Century solutions and ideas urgently need to adapt or failure is guaranteed.
We are still a long way to go until we have autonomous public transport, and you are right to single out procurement. We do have gaps in both replacing the driver (on all routes) and technology - on most of the routes, albeit not on all.
We're set for years of learning how to deal with the driver absence. A great opportunity for the companies operating in the space.
Poor transit agencies haven't got to grips with electrification, I do not have high hopes for an orderly transition to the next EVolution of Autonomous SharedMobility, I will try my best to Guide authorities with my CCAM-RITES Horizon Europe project but it's going to be a rough lesson for those who don't get onboard!
Great article. Appreciate the great insights on the Autonomous Bus opportunity. Thanks.
I do believe you’re underestimating the number of projects worldwide “more than 30”.
In Japan alone bus trials have risen to 143 vehicles (106 trials), and 7.5% of those trials are L4 (8 trials). Europe is lining up to start sizeable trials, while scaling existing pilots further. In the end I believe China is the biggest market in terms of deployed AV buses (and near term growth enabler):
Also larger projects are surfacing. WeRide has already deployed 150 AV buses in Guangzhou. Hong Kong will launch 200 buses, starting a multi year deployment this year. Geneva’s Ultimo project will deploy 15. Zurich Airport is expected to scale towards 12-14 buses this year. To my best knowledge,WeRide currently runs 24 projects across the globe. I believe they are the global leader in terms of projects, and Karsan (Adastec) leads full sized AV buses.
While I can put an exact number on it, worldwide the number of AV shuttle projects far exceeds 30.
On your comment on "more than 30 autonomous bus and shuttle projects are running on public roads", please note two important words in the text:
1) "Running" - the count only applies to existing (running) services; this leaves out many services, such as https://www.cavforth.com and many many others done in the past or expected in the future (Hong Kong).
2) "Public Roads" - this excludes all services in private or semi-public areas, i.e. gated communities, closed airport route (e.g. Zurich), university campuses etc - where most pilots take place. When you remove those - you remove most of the projects.
And:
a) I'd love to see the data you have on Japan, I'm aware that one of the earliest public L4 trials was Tier IV (https://tier4.co.jp/en/updates/press-release/20241031-01) in October 2024 (excluding earlier EasyMile and Navya pilots), and so while I do know of a few (in the 30+ count), I can't count 8.
b) China is a blind spot on everything - including AVs. While I am aware of some services, I'm sure not of all. I find it hard to believe WeRide has 30 live projects running on public roads but am happy to be corrected.
I would love to see more about this collaboration! The US is trying to figure out automated trucking, and there is some debate about how much connected vehicle infrastructure is required. Busses offer a way to study big vehicles at increasing speeds abs provide a ton of good along the way.
This hits me hard as both an autonomy engineer and daily bike- on- bus commuter. I know and (mostly) like the drivers on my route (we're human and the friction is part of the fun), and I depend on them to not run me over or drive off while my bike is on the front. I'm sure we are not taking full advantage of the sociological and traffic safety information those drivers collect every day. This is the first time I've had someonr in my life legitimately threatened by automation, and I'm making uo reasons to resist it.
At the same time, bus rapid transit is becoming a thing in my town, and i would love to see that service become as frequent and have hours similar to our commuter rail. Perhaps these highly constrained routes are place to pilot in the US, and we can leverage transit agencies' experience supporting passengers on light rail to help design the support functions.
Thanks for a very interesting and enlightening post! This is the kind of application I'd lost track of in the policy and technical debates about taxi services, which mostly compete with transit, but we should be looking for opportunities to improve all transportation.
You're right to point your personal experience - it is a great example of the importance of the bus driver. I expect bus drivers to move first to a passenger seat; then we'll have an stewardess / assistant in the bus; then move to fully autonomous. So have a few more (many) years ahead of us.
I take some extra comfort in the fact that my route involves freeway driving in some gnarly traffic, and Waymo is scaling back its car service in similar locations. Humans will certainly be involved in that high- risk driving for a long time.
I've been gently arguing with Phillip Koopman about a need for municiple infrastructure to help control autonomous vehicles and shave off the high consequence edge cases. He thinks public money is better spent on education about the technology, rather than accomodative technology (maybe with tolling), but the bus use case allows cities to control both the infrastructure and the vehicles. Working approaches could scale beyond busses.
The current single use passenger buses need to be replaced with something more flexible and multi purpose passengers and logistics to have that extra revenue opportunities to make passenger services more affordable and economically viable that current bus services just can't do. Making a bus Autonomous isn't a fix all to our overall transport and congestion problems.
Unfortunately public procurement is not embracing innovation to meet our needs for the 21st-Century 20th-Century solutions and ideas urgently need to adapt or failure is guaranteed.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/15492-EU%20public%20procurement%20rules%20%E2%80%93%20revision/F33114854_en
https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/80039/autonomous-vehicles-are-not-cars-
We are still a long way to go until we have autonomous public transport, and you are right to single out procurement. We do have gaps in both replacing the driver (on all routes) and technology - on most of the routes, albeit not on all.
We're set for years of learning how to deal with the driver absence. A great opportunity for the companies operating in the space.
Poor transit agencies haven't got to grips with electrification, I do not have high hopes for an orderly transition to the next EVolution of Autonomous SharedMobility, I will try my best to Guide authorities with my CCAM-RITES Horizon Europe project but it's going to be a rough lesson for those who don't get onboard!
https://x.com/i/status/2074545445536227826
Great article. Appreciate the great insights on the Autonomous Bus opportunity. Thanks.
I do believe you’re underestimating the number of projects worldwide “more than 30”.
In Japan alone bus trials have risen to 143 vehicles (106 trials), and 7.5% of those trials are L4 (8 trials). Europe is lining up to start sizeable trials, while scaling existing pilots further. In the end I believe China is the biggest market in terms of deployed AV buses (and near term growth enabler):
Also larger projects are surfacing. WeRide has already deployed 150 AV buses in Guangzhou. Hong Kong will launch 200 buses, starting a multi year deployment this year. Geneva’s Ultimo project will deploy 15. Zurich Airport is expected to scale towards 12-14 buses this year. To my best knowledge,WeRide currently runs 24 projects across the globe. I believe they are the global leader in terms of projects, and Karsan (Adastec) leads full sized AV buses.
While I can put an exact number on it, worldwide the number of AV shuttle projects far exceeds 30.
Thanks for this - happy to meet up and compare notes: https://app.reclaim.ai/m/Barak-Sas/25min
On your comment on "more than 30 autonomous bus and shuttle projects are running on public roads", please note two important words in the text:
1) "Running" - the count only applies to existing (running) services; this leaves out many services, such as https://www.cavforth.com and many many others done in the past or expected in the future (Hong Kong).
2) "Public Roads" - this excludes all services in private or semi-public areas, i.e. gated communities, closed airport route (e.g. Zurich), university campuses etc - where most pilots take place. When you remove those - you remove most of the projects.
And:
a) I'd love to see the data you have on Japan, I'm aware that one of the earliest public L4 trials was Tier IV (https://tier4.co.jp/en/updates/press-release/20241031-01) in October 2024 (excluding earlier EasyMile and Navya pilots), and so while I do know of a few (in the 30+ count), I can't count 8.
b) China is a blind spot on everything - including AVs. While I am aware of some services, I'm sure not of all. I find it hard to believe WeRide has 30 live projects running on public roads but am happy to be corrected.
Looking forward to getting to know,
Barak
I would love to see more about this collaboration! The US is trying to figure out automated trucking, and there is some debate about how much connected vehicle infrastructure is required. Busses offer a way to study big vehicles at increasing speeds abs provide a ton of good along the way.
This hits me hard as both an autonomy engineer and daily bike- on- bus commuter. I know and (mostly) like the drivers on my route (we're human and the friction is part of the fun), and I depend on them to not run me over or drive off while my bike is on the front. I'm sure we are not taking full advantage of the sociological and traffic safety information those drivers collect every day. This is the first time I've had someonr in my life legitimately threatened by automation, and I'm making uo reasons to resist it.
At the same time, bus rapid transit is becoming a thing in my town, and i would love to see that service become as frequent and have hours similar to our commuter rail. Perhaps these highly constrained routes are place to pilot in the US, and we can leverage transit agencies' experience supporting passengers on light rail to help design the support functions.
Thanks for a very interesting and enlightening post! This is the kind of application I'd lost track of in the policy and technical debates about taxi services, which mostly compete with transit, but we should be looking for opportunities to improve all transportation.
Thank you.
You're right to point your personal experience - it is a great example of the importance of the bus driver. I expect bus drivers to move first to a passenger seat; then we'll have an stewardess / assistant in the bus; then move to fully autonomous. So have a few more (many) years ahead of us.
I take some extra comfort in the fact that my route involves freeway driving in some gnarly traffic, and Waymo is scaling back its car service in similar locations. Humans will certainly be involved in that high- risk driving for a long time.
I've been gently arguing with Phillip Koopman about a need for municiple infrastructure to help control autonomous vehicles and shave off the high consequence edge cases. He thinks public money is better spent on education about the technology, rather than accomodative technology (maybe with tolling), but the bus use case allows cities to control both the infrastructure and the vehicles. Working approaches could scale beyond busses.
I'm with you on using public money for public good. Buses are a public good, a car is not. simple as that.