The original “Navia” shuttle showing off in Singapore in 2014, after they first were available for sale.
Brad Templeton
Navya, when it was founded as Navia is a true pioneer in the robocar space. They were the the first to offer a commercial robocar for sale over 5 years ago. The “trick” was that it was a very low speed vehicle, allowing early deployment. Unfortunately, the other trick was they have not yet reached the confidence to run it without a human monitor on board able to hit a kill switch.
So it’s sad to learn that they have a new CEO and are altering their plans. In particular, they are pulling back from making a physical shuttle, and want to change to licensing their technology to others who want to make such shuttles. They will still make, deploy and test their shuttles as they do today, but may not be able to deploy them at the planned rate due to regulatory barriers.
In addition, Navya has had a few safety incidents, including one on July 19 where their shuttle struck a woman in the knee at 7.5mph. The woman was reportedly not looking where she was going, and walked into the shuttle even though it stopped as she approached. In spite of apparent fault by the pedestrian, Navya shut down testing in Vienna for 4 days. EasyMile, Navya’s main competitor, had a more serious incident when one of their shuttles slammed on the brakes suddenly and a passenger inside was hurt.
This is one of the more striking examples of our journey in the Gartner group hype cycle “trough of disillusionment” which occurs after the initial strong hype on any technology.
Navya cites regulatory problems, stronger because they are European. They don’t think that they will get regulatory approval to deploy shuttles in the next 2 years, and they had hoped for that.
“Last Mile” shuttles
A bigger question is just how good an idea shuttles, in particular “last mile” shuttles are. “Last mile” is a term from the world of public transit. Many of those who see the world through a public transit lens have made the strange mistake as seeing robocars — the most revolutionary technology in transportation in a century — as simply a better way to get people to and from train and bus stops. Put that way, the last mile focus sounds ridiculous, but it is also true that short controlled routes, particularly in campus situations, are an easier problem that can be solve earlier, thus meriting some attention.
Robotaxi service and private robocars offer world-changing benefits: Saving lives, enabling low cost, green on-demand transportation, rewriting cities and restoring billions of hours of personal time. Taking the drivers out of shuttles simply saves money — though by saving money it would eventually make more and better shuttle service economical where it wasn’t before. In today’s prototype phase, none of the projects are saving anybody any money, though; quite the reverse.
A more modern Navya, deployed for Michigan.
Brad Templeton
Deploying means risk though, and the other goals more easily justify risk than the goal of more shuttles without driver salaries. Saving money is good but does little for the passengers. They can already read a book on shuttles. They are already low speed and fairly safe.
The big difference comes if you can (once cheap) provide service at whole new levels, 24/7 and on tons of routes. But this is where “extension of transit” thinking steers us wrong. It seems more likely that experiments in micromobility — with scooters and 1-2 person cars — are the way to best serve that short trip need in a way that uses very little energy and clogs roads the least. Rather than having fixed routes and schedules, customers much prefer ad-hoc, on demand service if they can get it.
This raises again the “paradox of sharing” I have addressed. The more people who share a ride, the more each person must compromise from their desired route and travel times. As the compromise increases, they are pushed into using other modes, reducing the load factor and efficiency of the group vehicle. Big shuttles are not efficient doing ad-hoc rides for 1-2 people, and micromobility wins. (Disclaimer, I am an investor/advisor in a micromobility startup.)
When it comes to economics, the big win remains in replacing the driver where there is only one passenger (or a solo driver.) The more people in the vehicle sharing the cost of the driver, the less dramatic the impact is per person. This is one of the reasons that planes and trains, though they can be automated more easily than cars, remain almost entirely unautomated.
Robocars and other new modes will change every aspect of ground transportation, not just personal car transport. They will change trains. They will change air travel. They will change buses and vanpools and even cycling and walking, in both good ways and bad. But the one thing not to do is imagine they are just some adjunct for 20th century transportation, any more than the purpose of cars was to get you to your horse.
Nonetheless Navya deserves great credit for their accomplishments so far. They have sold vehicles years before anybody else. As the first commercial vehicle, they were designed to have no steering wheel or brakes long before Google’s prototypes, and they quickly busted the silly idea that there was a progression of “levels” based on the human’s role in the vehicle. But even for optimists, 2013 was too early to be selling a vehicle, and their strategy moving focus to working with partners is probably a wise one, and even an easily reversible one if the wind changes.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story reported that they were ceasing production of their vehicles, but they report they are still manufacturing them, but may work with partners when it comes time to really ramp up production.
