Volkswagen and Mobileye to Deploy Autonomous EV Ride-Hailing Service in Israel, Starting 2019

30 October, 2018

Volkswagen will bring the electric vehicles and Mobileye will provide its level-4 AV driverless solution

By Orna Gadel, Techtime

The Volkswagen Group, Mobileye (an Intel Company) and Champion Motors announced plans to deploy Israel’s first self-driving ride hailing service – or Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) – starting next year. The partners will establish a joint venture called “New Mobility in Israel”. While Volkswagen will provide the electric vehicles (EVs) and knowledge in user-centered mobility services,  Mobileye will provide its level-4 AV Kit. It is a turn-key, driverless solution comprised of hardware, driving policy, safety software and map data. Champion Motors, the importer of  Volkswagen  vehicles in Israel, will run the fleet operations and control center.

Together, the three companies will add the mobility platform and services, content and other MaaS tools. In a joint release, the companies said that the government of Israel has committed to support the project in three main areas: legal and regulatory support, sharing the required infrastructure and traffic data, and providing access to infrastructure as needed. The New Mobility in Israel will be Israel’s first commercial MaaS service with self-driving vehicles, but all facilitations and rulings will be applied to all other ventures that wish to operate a MaaS in Israel.

Volkswagen, Mobileye and Champion Motors will use New Mobility in Israel to serve as a global beta site for testing the Mobility-as-a-Service model using autonomous electric vehicles. The project will start in early 2019 and scale to commercialization by 2022. New Mobility in Israel will start with several dozen vehicles and plans to reach hundreds of self-driving electric vehicles in its final phase.

“We believe that self-driving electric vehicles will offer Israel and cities around the world safe, clean and emission-free mobility,” said Dr. Herbert Diess, CEO of the Volkswagen Group. Professor Amnon Shashua, Mobileye CEO and senior vice president at Intel, said: “Our service aims to intelligently and dynamically adapt to the urban mobility needs of the 21st Century, catering to the mobility-mileage demands within the city while minimizing the direct/indirect incurred societal costs – air/noise pollution, congestion and safety.”

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