Singapore Promotes Autonomous Vehicle Mobility-on-Demand Service

Cloud-based service enables mobility-on-demand service (Delphi)

The longstanding trend of migration from rural areas to the cities continues. For instance, India is projected to add 404 million urban dwellers between 2014 and 2050. That is more than six times the today’s British population. There is less and less free space for cars in the increasingly dense cities all over the world. Furthermore, there are more and more moneyed people who can afford a car. This causes more and more traffic congestion and vehicle emissions within a small area. Honestly, according to these facts, it is recommended to change this unsustainable development. Perhaps a well-organized mobility-on-demand service could be the answer to this challenge.

A well-organized mobility-on-demand service has the potential to increase vehicle utilization rates and promote sustainable urban land use

A well-developed mobility-on-demand service can change the urban mobility through one-way car sharing. This promising approach is even more attractive when combined with electrically driven and autonomous vehicle. The Singaporean Land Transport Authority (LTA) aims to promote their autonomous vehicle mobility-on-demand service. For this purpose, Delphi Automotive PLC has been collected to conduct a trial of an urban mobility-on-demand service in Singapore’s Autonomous Vehicles Test Bed. It is situated in one-north which is a subzone and business park located in Queenstown.

Delphi will provide a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, they create a cloud-based mobility-on-demand software (AMoD) suite in the framework of the participation in the Singaporean Autonomous Vehicle Initiative (SAVI). “We are honored to partner with the Singapore LTA on advancing innovative mobility systems, which will put Singapore at the forefront of autonomous vehicle adoption,” said Kevin Clark, president and chief executive officer, Delphi. “This is a great recognition of Delphi’s leadership in advanced safety technologies, automated software, systems integration, as well as our ability to drive these mobility solutions forward for our customers.”

As demonstrated above, cloud-based mobility-on-demand enables a more flexible and spontaneous access to urban car sharing. An end-to-end automated vehicle ecosystem in connection with a cloud-servicing capability can be applied in passenger cars, commercial vehicles, buses, purpose-built mobility pods and electric vehicles. Singapore LTA’s interest is a more comfortable “first mile” and “last mile” transit between a mass transit station and other places like the office, a shopping center or your home. The intention is to increase the use of mass transit systems, on the one hand, and reduce air pollution and traffic jams, on the other hand.

“As a partner in SAVI, Delphi will use a foundation of the same vehicle technologies that enabled us to successfully complete the first coast-to-coast autonomous drive of the United States in 2015,” said Jeff Owens, chief technology officer, Delphi. “Developing a cloud-based software servicing capability integrated with the vehicle creates an end-to-end solution that will eventually allow our existing, and many potential new customers, the ability to enter emerging mobility markets.”

Singapore is promoting the development of autonomous vehicles for some time. Recently, the driverless taxi nuTonomy grabbed the headlines. However, challenges like the ethic dilemma of the driverless car technology or the thirst for higher data transmission rates needs to be solved for the breakthrough of autonomous vehicles.