After Busse and Reza, Ride the future has a new family member: Hjulia! Now it is time to put this third autonomous vehicle into operation at Campus Valla and in Vallastaden in Linköping.
"The fact that the project is growing is very positive. We continue to build the sustainable city of the future and take the lead in the development of new sustainable mobility solutions," says Muharrem Demirok (C), chairman of the community planning committee Linköping Municipality.
Busse and Reza are now joined by Hjulia
A naming contest for the third vehicle was organized, where the project's safety drivers were allowed to contribute with their own name suggestions. The winning name was "Hjulia".
- Akademiska Hus provides land and bus stops to enable this rolling research platform to be implemented in the best possible way. It is very gratifying that the project is now being expanded with another vehicle, Hjulia, and that the link between Campus Valla and Vallastaden will be even stronger. As property owners, we look forward to continuing to contribute to this exciting and unique project that brings us a bit closer to a society where public transport can be done with self-driving vehicles," says Mikael Hagerfors, strategic property developer at Akademiska Hus.
"By investing in a third vehicle, we can expand the project and offer a larger field study to the researchers who want to test and develop interesting studies on the mobility of the future. We are creating completely unique conditions for mobility research, an area that is growing and becoming increasingly important for building the sustainable society of the future," adds Anna Anund, VTI.
Ride the future is the only project in Sweden that has vehicles from two different manufacturers that communicate with each other in the same ecosystem. With this addition, Ride the future will also be one of the largest projects with autonomous vehicles in Sweden.
"With Hjulia, we can increase the continuity of operations. The fact that the vehicles have different technologies and must be able to communicate together and with traffic management means that we are getting closer to what such solutions may look like in the future. This makes the Ride the future project extra interesting," says Hugo Hardestam, project manager at Transdev Sverige AB.
Facts:
- Ride the future is a research project whose aim is to find out how electrified and self-driving minibuses can complement existing public transport and thus increase public transport's competitiveness against the privately owned car, and make it easier for more people to travel by public transport.
- The partners in the project are Akademiska Hus, Linköping Municipality, Linköping Science Park, Linköping University, RISE, Transdev, VTI and Östgötatrafiken.
- The buses operate a four-kilometre stretch on Campus Valla and Vallastaden in Linköping with 13 stops. Unique about the project is that the work with three vehicles from two different types that interact with each other: Navya Autonomous Shuttle DL4 and EasyMile EZ10 gen2 that takes 11-13 passengers. At the moment, up to 5-6 passengers are welcomed on board.
- The third vehicle that has now been put into operation is of the type EasyMile EZ10 gen2.
- A safety driver is on board each trip and is responsible for the vehicle's operation by supervising the driving and, if necessary, taking over manual control and acting as customer host.
Mikael Hagerfors
Strategisk Fastighetsutvecklare