Some say driverless vehicles are the future of mobility in rural areas but there are many challenges to address before they can be fully implemented. Self-driving shuttles have been deployed in a remote region of southeastern France amid growing European interest in automated electric vehicles (EVs) as an option for public transport. “We are trying to ensure that this is a new means of travel and mobility for people living in suburban or rural areas,” Yann Arnaud, director of responses to customer needs and innovation at the French insurance company MACIF, told Euronews Next on the sidelines of the European Mobility Expo.
The shuttles, which have been deployed since 2020, currently use a path of around 5 km with seven stops over 20 minutes with a control operator present to ensure a swift journey. “We guarantee safety through a technology that is in line with the European vision of what an automated vehicle should be, so a vehicle that has learnt its route before operating it and which, when it is in operation and without a driver on board, simply compares what it has learnt with what it sees,” said Benjamin Beaudet, general director at Beti, the operator of the automated shuttles. He drew a comparison to US and Chinese companies that have focused more on self-driving taxis, which don’t have predefined routes, with leading companies being Waymo (owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company), Uber, and Tesla.
The shuttle is being tested in a group of towns called Val.
