yahoo news | Volkswagen’s MOIA and Uber begin testing self-driving ID. Buzz minibuses in Los Angeles
Volkswagen’s autonomous‑mobility arm, MOIA America, has begun on‑road testing in Los Angeles together with Uber, deploying around ten ID. Buzz AD autonomous vans. The trial phase—still requiring a human safety operator in every vehicle—marks the first step of a rollout that aims to offer commercial rides with safety operators by the end of 2026 and a fully driverless service by 2027. Los Angeles is the inaugural U.S. city for what the two firms describe as a multi‑city deployment over the next decade.
The ID. Buzz AD differs from the consumer‑facing ID. Buzz: it carries up to six passengers, features powered sliding doors and is equipped with a 27‑sensor suite (13 cameras, nine LiDAR units and five radars) feeding data into a Mobileye‑sourced computer running the Mobileye Drive platform. Volkswagen’s partnership with Mobileye replaces an earlier deal with Argo AI and places the software, hardware and digital‑mapping responsibilities on Mobileye. To sell rides in California, MOIA America must clear both a commercial deployment permit from the DMV and a ride‑hailing permit from the Public Utilities Commission; once those are secured, the fleet is slated to expand to more than 100 vehicles with safety operators by late 2026, over 500 fully autonomous units by the third quarter of 2027, and eventually more than 1,000 vehicles across additional U.S. cities.
The launch comes into a market already served by Waymo’s fully driverless service, giving MOIA and Uber a direct performance benchmark. MOIA leverages its ride‑pooling experience from Hamburg—where the ID. Buzz AD has been operating in a commercial context under the ALIKE project—while Uber positions itself as the distribution layer for autonomous fleets rather than a technology developer. By partnering with multiple vehicle providers (including Motional, Wayve/Nissan and now MOIA), Uber supplies demand, branding and dispatch infrastructure, allowing each partner to focus on vehicle and software development as the ecosystem of city‑by‑city autonomous mobility expands.
Read more: https://thenextweb.com/news/volkswagen-moia-uber-los-angeles-id-buzz-robotaxi
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