VW's Seat brand wants to join robotaxi revolution

As the European auto industry embraces mobility services, Seat wants to be in the driver’s seat as part of parent Volkswagen Group’s push into robotaxis.

Seat will start reviewing "the way we build cars and start to build cars and vehicles designed for a service,"  Arantxa Alonso, Seat's head of business development, told Automotive News Europe in an interview.

For example, she said, an urban environment requires agility, speed and easy parking capabilities. That means a purely urban vehicle would not have to satisfy certain requirements for driving on highways.

"Our r&d department should be able to deliver the first prototypes by the end of this year and we might show them a few months later," Alonso said. Those prototypes might not even be a car but a mixture with something else, she said.

“We have to think laterally,” Alonso said, “because otherwise, someone could come and disrupt us. Disruption comes fast and is hard to predict."

Robo-taxi operators

The research includes robotaxis. “We want to be one of these robotaxi operators of the future,” Alonso said, adding, “We are mainly focusing on private, end-to-end mobility.”

Seat is not alone in its robotaxi ambitions. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn has promised to start a robotaxi service by 2022. The French automaker offered a peak at its vision in March at the Geneva auto show when it unveiled its EZ-GO driverless electric vehicle. In addition, Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors have formed an alliance and are seeking to work with technology companies such as Google and Uber Technologies that are experimenting with self-driving cars.

Seat’s parent, Volkswagen Group, is considering launching a fleet of robotaxis for ride-hailing in the future as part of plans to expand its mobility services business.

Volvo is betting driverless vehicles will make up one-third of its deliveries by the middle of the next decade, with sales growth propelled in part by demand from robotaxi operators.

General Motors plans a commercial launch of fleets of fully autonomous robotaxis in multiple dense urban environments in 2019. Ford aims to have self-driving vehicles on the road by 2021 as part of ride-hailing fleets. Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo is testing a robotaxi service.

Will Seat’s new vehicles be autonomous?

“Obviously,” Alonso said. “At the beginning, they will have some autonomous functionality, starting from the ability to park themselves.”

As regards full autonomy, Alonso said, “The technology is there, as (Google’s) Waymo shows.”

Seat is trying to get a quick foothold in the new mobility services, starting from its home base of Spain and expanding in the next few years into other southern European countries, such as Portugal and Italy, Alonso said. All the services would be under the umbrella of a new company called Xmoba Ventures, starting with the car-sharing company Respiro.

Respiro already is operating in Madrid. Other Spanish cities will follow within a couple of years, maybe with a quick expansion to Portugal because it’s across the border, Alonso said. Italy might follow in 2020, followed by France. Connection to specific cities and local partners will be an important factor in deciding the time frame.

The brand name Respiro — which means “breath” in Spanish —most likely will be exported, at least to Portugal and Italy.

Another building block of Seat’s strategy in mobility is Just Moove, an app that allows a customer to manage all mobility needs, from paying tolls to parking, refueling and taxis. Public transportation is expected to be added later. The aim of the service is to enable the customer to have an instant picture of mobility expenses and be able to better plan them.

The main hurdle, Alonso said, is that most companies are reluctant to lose control of the access to their customers.

“We believe disruption will start in urban areas, where the use of mobility as a service will gradually replace car ownership, and then extend to rural areas,” she said. “Even car lovers will abandon their cars because of the cost factor.

“Mobility as a service can reduce the cost of transportation by a factor of 10 if compared with a new car, two to four if compared with a fully amortized car. How fast the disruption will happen will strongly depend on regulations.”

Seat’s efforts will be coordinated with other parts of the VW Group. Among the main fields of connectivity, autonomy, sharing and electrification, Seat leads the group in connectivity and joins other group brands in car-sharing activities, with a responsibility for southern Europe.

“Through this coordinated effort,” Alonso said, “we hope to spread our activities quickly.”