A few months ago, I wrote a Viewpoint saying that personal automobiles will have advanced safety electronics sooner than most people expect, such as the cameras and LIDAR for automatic braking and speed control, but the autonomous car is some years away.
I suggested that what would happen much sooner than we might expect is autonomous public vehicles — taxis and buses that will take us anywhere we want to go — that will eliminate the need for personal cars in the city.
I recently talked with the folks from EasyMile (Toulouse, France), who make the wonderful (I think so) EZ10 battery-powered autonomous electric vehicle. It seats up to six people and four more passengers can ride standing. The small shuttle bus is powered by a Lithium-ion (LiFeP04) 15.2-kW battery (a 30-kW battery will be available in 2017), which can be fully charged in just eight hours. With a full charge, the EZ10 can operate for 12 hours (without air conditioning) and travel from 37 to 50 miles a day. While it cruises at 7.5 to 12.5 mph, its synchronous motor propels it to a max speed of 25 mph.
The shuttle is designed for last-mile travel, such as between travel hubs and final destinations, or for looped routes within confined areas like airports, city centers, and business parks. It's connected via cellular 3G/4G for GPS, fleet management, and remote control capabilities. The vehicle has two localization Lidars in the roof that are good for 180 m at 110° each, and two Lidars for real-time 360° 3D distance and calibrated reflectivity. It uses Linux OS, but I don't know what sort of processor(s).
The EZ10 is operated entirely autonomously and doesn't even have a steering wheel. EasyMile says it hopes to have 100−200 EZ10s in operation by 2017. For more information, have a look at http://easymile.com.
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