Mobileye, Holo race to get Nio robotaxis ready for Norway debut

The promise of driverless on-demand vehicles whisking passengers from the airport to the city center or providing last-mile transport services remains unfulfilled.

The cost and complexity of achieving autonomous driving was underlined by the high-profile collapse of former Ford Motor and Volkswagen Group partner Argo AI.

Despite the shockwaves of Argo AI’s failure, self-driving technology projects continue to run around the world.

In Norway, the goal is to bring a fleet of 50 fully autonomous vehicles to Oslo’s roads by late 2024 or early 2025.

The team working to make this a reality includes autonomous mobility implementation specialist Holo, self-driving system developer Mobileye, and Ruter, Oslo's public transport authority.

The partners are currently collecting data via a small fleet of Nio ES8 full-electric SUVs while simultaneously working to secure the necessary driving permits for the vehicles.

"There is a testing period in various stages between now and in the middle of 2024. At that point, we expect to be able to open up a limited program where people can join in a select way," Holo CEO Christian Bering Pedersen told Automotive News Europe.

He added that the overall development program carries a cost of between 15 to 20 million euros ($16 to $21 million).

Mobileye will equip the vehicles with Mobileye Drive, its Level 4 self-driving system, which is part of the Intel subsidiary’s Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions  to enabling autonomous shuttle services.

"We wanted to be part of the pilot project in Oslo to show how flexible autonomous vehicles can be implemented in different driving scenarios," Christian Lichtmannecker, Mobileye's head of global business development and strategic partnerships, autonomous MaaS, said in an email reply to questions.

The Nios’ cameras, radars and lidars run on Mobileye’s EyeQ system on chip (SoC) that helps enable the vehicle’s self-driving features.

"The retrofitting takes place in our workshop in Israel," Lichtmannecker said. "After the vehicles are deployed on-site, the testing can begin. "For the Norway project, the vehicles are undergoing extensive testing in the Grorud Valley, which is a suburb of Oslo, to ensure all safety standards and regulatory requirements are met.

Multiple challenges

Gartner analyst Pedro Pacheco said getting the robotaxis to operate without disengagements and without intervention from a remote human operator -- while also safely covering a broad geographic area -- are major challenges.

"This leads to a persistent and continuous scalability problem when it’s necessary to expand the geographic area of operation and the breadth of conditions the robotaxi needs to tackle," he said in an email reply to questions. "This, in turn, makes robotaxi operation expensive, hence not being able to fulfill robotaxis’ original promise of provide accessible and safe individual mobility."

The Oslo program will start by focusing on providing last-mile transportation services to the outer reaches of the city, where public transit options are less widespread.

"Ruter knows a lot about mobility in the Oslo area, and they came to us saying they want to investigate the first-mile and last-mile possibilities for users in the suburbs," Bering said. "This is where they say it's challenging to deliver public transportation today."

Holo is identifying suitable pickup and drop-off points in these areas, hoping to provide a degree of flexibility for users falling somewhere between a fixed bus line and a door-to-door taxi service.

"You may have to walk to a corner to get picked up," Bering said. "The idea is to cover this area with on-demand transportation, and part of the strategy is to give people a better transportation option than just public transportation."

Pacheco noted that if robotaxis manage to deliver on their core promise --providing individual mobility at a low price – there could be accessibility benefits.

"However, this is not always the best way given that more cars on urban streets lead to more congestion," he adds.

Although, he agrees that robotaxis could play an important role in providing cheaper transport for people with limited mobility as well as allowing for safer transportation of more vulnerable travelers, especially in areas with stronger criminality.

How Holo, Mobileye work together

Through extensive testing, Holo has gained insights into key requirements for safe driving in various weather conditions, adjusting hardware and software specifications to create a feedback loop with Mobileye.

"We put the context around the data you can get from the vehicle, describe what the challenge might be, send it back to Mobileye, and they make the changes to the self-driving software," Bering said. “For example, an update of mapping data.”

Lichtmannecker explained that every deployment of autonomous vehicles comes with individual challenges.

"In the pilot project in Oslo, we expect that the weather will play a decisive role," he said. "Heavy winter storms could put our sensing capabilities to the test as cameras could be obstructed by snow and ice."

To mitigate this, the Nios are equipped with a self-cleaning technology that keeps dirt, ice and snow clear of the lenses.

More equitable mobility

Lichtmannecker said there is a growing number of people who cannot access conventional means of transport.

"Autonomous vehicles offer the elderly, people with disabilities or simply people without driver’s licenses a convenient new mode of transportation that can be easily adjusted to their personal needs," he said.

Bering said the cost of using the autonomous on-demand service, which will be managed through Ruter's app, will fall somewhere between the price of a bus ticket and the cost of a taxi.

He added that somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of the cost of operating a bus line is the cost of a driver, and by replacing the driver with an autonomous driving system, Ruter could eventually reduce prices for the robotaxi service.

"This would bring them closer to Ruter’s public transportation prices, even though you are delivering a quality on-demand service," he said.

The use of self-driving shuttles could also help Ruter with another challenge it faces -- a lack of bus drivers.

"Ruter sees this as a strategic issue," Bering said. "They can see that they might not be able to provide the services that people need if they don't take autonomous vehicles seriously."

Douglas A. Bolduc contributed