Intel’s Mobileye will launch a self-driving taxi service in Munich, Germany
Intel’s subsidiary Mobileye, which is responsible for the vision-based autonomous vehicles, announced that it will launch a self-driving taxi service in Munich, Germany in 2022. Customers can request a car through Sixt or Mobileye’s apps. The service will be operated in cooperation with Sixt and Moovit. Sixt is a German car rental company, and Moovit is an Israeli-based start-up company engaged in mobile data. It was recently acquired by Intel for $900 million.
According to The Verge report, Mobileye will be equipped with safety drivers for testing in the early stage, and will not completely shift from testing to commercial operations until it is approved by the German regulatory agency. Among the companies that are currently engaged in the autonomous driving business, Mobileye’s plan can be said to be ambitious. It is developing four different products with different degrees of automation. It currently provides advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to 25 companies.
This time the launch of the robotaxi service model is the first product to adopt Mobileye’s complete solution. Its camera, radar, and lidar sensors are integrated with many of Mobileye’s driving strategies. The Mobileye Drive autonomous driving system is equipped with 8 EyeQ 5 chips, the module volume is 324 x 232 x 89 mm, the computing power is 192 TOPs, and the power consumption is only 650W.
Intel said it will also cooperate with Volkswagen to test autonomous taxi services in Israel, and plans to launch them in 2022. At the same time, Intel is still waiting for approval from South Korean regulators and intends to launch the same service locally. Earlier, Mobileye also announced plans to test vehicles in New York.