Two Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles (EVs) will begin operation this month as part of Cruise, a self-driving car service, in order to create digital maps for Cruise’s self-driving cars. Dubai will be the first city in the world to commercially run Cruise self-driving vehicles outside of America thanks to the procedure, which will take place before the debut of the real service in 2023.
According to the Dubai Media Office, this comes under the implementation of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, on the lines of the agreement signed between Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and Cruise, to operate Cruise autonomous vehicles to offer taxi and e-Hail services in Dubai.
The two Chevrolet Bolt EVs will be initially deployed on Jumeirah streets and driven by specialist drivers. Cruise’s technology uses a high-resolution map of the physical environment, which is created using specialised mapping vehicles equipped with a suite of sensors including LiDAR, camera, and others, are driven throughout the city to collect data, which is then used to create a navigable map for autonomous vehicles(AVs).
Cruise, General Motors’ (GM) majority-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary, shares the same vision as GM that AVs can help lead to a safe, less congested future for all. These efforts will clearly advance a vision of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.
Mattar Al Tayer, Director-General, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of RTA, said, “We have plans to increase the number of deployed vehicles gradually to reach up to 4000 vehicles by 2030, and enhancing Dubai’s pioneering role in self-driving transport. It is an important step towards realising the Dubai Smart Self-Driving Transport Strategy aimed to transform 25 per cent of total mobility journeys in Dubai into journeys on various self-driving transport means by 2030.”
In April 2021, RTA signed an agreement with Cruise to operate their autonomous vehicles to offer taxi and e-Hail services, as part of its efforts to transform Dubai into the smartest city in the world.
The agreement, which is the first of its kind worldwide between a government entity and a leading company in the field of AVs, is a major step toward realising Dubai’s Self-Driving Transport Strategy aimed at converting 25 per cent of total trips in Dubai into self-driving transport trips across different modes of transport by 2030.
Recently, RTA had also signed an agreement with the Australian bus manufacturer BusTech Group to test the operation of an eco-friendly, zero-emission electric bus to verify its operational feasibility in Dubai’s climatic environment.
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