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MIT spinout NuTonomy Rolls out Self-driving Taxis in Singapore – Beating Uber to it

Mashak | 01:10:00 | 0 comments

NuTonomy

When Uber announced on 18 August that it would let the public hail self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh before the end of the month, some autonomous vehicle experts could not believe it was happening so soon.
Uber has taken the plaudits for its audacious plan to deploy driverless cars as soon as this month, but the U.S. giant has been beaten to the punch for actually introducing autonomous vehicles by a far lower-profile company that is working on the other side of the world in Singapore.
NuTonomy, a three-year-old company that span out of MIT, announced that its first autonomous vehicles available for public hire have hit the roads of the Southeast Asian country today.
The name may not be familiar, but this development hasn’t come out of the blue. Cambridge, MA-based NuTonomy has been working with authorities in Singapore for some time as part of the country’s focus on surfacing new technology. Indeed, the Singapore Economic Development Board itself was one of a number of high-profile backers to take part in NuTonomy’s $16 million Series A financing round in May this year.
As we wrote then, the company plans to introduce a fully-autonomous “robo” taxi service by 2018. Today’s announcement is a major step towards that goal, but NuTonomy has been privately testing self-driving cars in Singapore since April. It is also conducting trials in London and Michigan, and counts Jaguar Land Rover among its partners.
Singapore is the real test bed thanks to the support of authorities in the country, who are switched on by the potential to embrace technology to reduce congestion and cars ownership.