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Urban Innovate TALKS explores how cities, technology, and people shape the future of mobility. Hosted by Dr. Henriette Cornet, the series features conversations with global experts on autonomous vehicles, public transit, and the human side of innovation — including insights from pulsur, our AI platform for understanding public sentiment and travel behavior.
Henriette Cornet (00:14)
Hi William, welcome back.
William (00:15)
Hi, I'm Hit. Thank you.
Henriette Cornet (00:17)
So we are in the third chapter of this series on autonomous vehicles for transit. I think we can start calling it like that because we had all these various topics on the challenges but also what's doable, what we should pay attention to. And yeah, thank you so much for coming back with us.
William (00:27)
We can.
You're welcome, it's always a pleasure to discuss this amazing topic. And all the challenge as you say.
Henriette Cornet (00:45)
Cool, cool, cool.
yeah, yeah, there are many. And I think, yeah, today's topic will be around that as well. And something I wanted to discuss with you today is very much towards like the AV readiness. Like how can cities, how can transit agencies prepare, be ready for autonomous vehicles? And the reason why I wanted to focus on this topic is that we have seen lately, I mean,
For years, I have seen reports on which topics are important and where to start and what should be considered when deploying an autonomous vehicle service in the city. still, despite the also new reports that have been out, there is one from UITP, from Eurocities, even in the US, I know some university like UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles
are working on this topic of readiness, I feel that there is a consensus on all the topics that are important to consider, and I will mention some of them and to also kind of frame the discussion. But what I would like to know is concretely where to start, and I would like also to divide the discussion between where to start when the city and the transit agency has never...
done anything with autonomous vehicles before and how to scale maybe to a later phase when some tests, some pilots have been made and what's after this phase of pilot and testing. I would divide the topic in these two parts and as I mentioned from the layers that we can read in these different papers and reports, there is a topic of governance and authority
William (02:15)
demonstration.
Henriette Cornet (02:30)
What is the different roles of each player in this governance model? Who is doing what and who do we need around the table for working together? The role of an operator, I think you would be the perfect person to answer all that. The topic ⁓ of safety definitely is embedded into that as well. A topic I like very much is the topic of infrastructure, the physical and the digital infrastructure.
And also, of course, I think it's your favorite topic, the performance measurement. Performance measurement of a service. But here as well, like how do we measure all that? It's just to frame a little bit the discussions, but I don't want to be too restrictive and there may be many other topics. So imagine the situation. There is now in Europe, this service in Leuven in Belgium with
WeRide shuttles, running, open to the public, integrated within public transport. I tested it recently, you tested it as well. I I really like it. I find it a very nice project and I like how it is integrated and also branded with the local transport operator from Belgium, DeLijn. Imagine there is like a documentary on TV.
reporting on this, let's say, pilot deployment. And tomorrow, a transit agency from a mid-size city, a city same size as Leuven in Belgium, come to you and say, I want that. I want exactly this thing in my city. I want it tomorrow. What do I need to do? So is it possible? Can I get it tomorrow?
And so tell me William, how do I get that in my city? What would you answer?
William (04:17)
First, that's a very good question,
a very concrete one, and very aligned with, I think we already discussed that, something that I always hear for 10 years now, is I can see it's driving, so now it works, why don't we have thousands of them everywhere? And so we have to make the difference between...
show demonstration and real services. But that's a really good question and maybe I would answer or tackle two different things. First, don't go directly to the vehicle provider because the vehicle is just one piece of it. And so maybe you need to go to
a service provider, an operator, a public transit operator, or anything can be a robotaxi or public transit, whatever, but go to a service provider, not to the vehicle provider. The vehicle is just a piece of it. But if a city or an authority comes to me with that question, my first reaction would be, what are you looking for?
Henriette Cornet (05:28)
Mm-hmm.
William (05:29)
Are you looking for a service? Which service? Are you looking for a demonstration just to shine and show you have innovation in your city? What's the point? What's the target? And really, how to address these specific needs they have. That would be the really the first point really to understand what they are looking for. Yeah.
Henriette Cornet (05:43)
yeah.
And if there is a roadmap, right? Some cities have
really kind of a roadmap where they want to build on long-term.
William (05:54)
Yeah, one era first and then everywhere,
know, a vehicles, or lot of vehicles, but just you know, think about...
what they are looking for in terms of service, not only in terms of technology. I want to see one vehicle driving and then I want to see 10 vehicles driving. That's not the point. And that's not how I think we can build the future because we can use this tech. And I think that was a discussion we had in the last episode. We can use this tech for, you know, for small robot taxi, big robot taxi, mini buses, anything, basically all big trucks. So really the point is what's the service needed. And
second step would be try to define exactly what you're looking for what needs to be tackled
That's why I would say don't go directly to the vehicle provider, but ask a mobility provider to write a checklist of everything they should have to build that service. Because obviously there's the vehicle, the vehicle should have some equipments, the vehicle provider should demonstrate some safety, some...
Henriette Cornet (06:51)
Mm-hmm.
William (07:00)
proofs on the entire universe.
Henriette Cornet (07:01)
But the transit agency
would not know in detail if they don't know the technology yet, you know? So that's, I'm provoking a bit the thing here.
William (07:07)
Yeah, exactly. That's why,
and I think it's very difficult for each actor because obviously you have cities everywhere and each one cannot know exactly what are the things where you need to be careful.
Henriette Cornet (07:21)
the ODD
William (07:22)
On my own, I built a checklist, everything that we need to have before we can buy 5, 10, 100 vehicles for mobility service and your checklist of everything you need to check before you can commit. And that's what I would advise to this.
customer or city, be supported by someone who knows and build that checklist so you can be confident on what you will deploy in your territory.
Henriette Cornet (07:50)
And that's also the way I would imagine future procurement process to be, is that transit agencies, the city will come with more of a service rather than vehicles, as you said. So that they say, have this population, we have this neighborhood, we are deploying a bus line, it will be too expensive and we know, and the demand is too low, too irregular.
So it's hard to predict when people are taking the bus, but still they need one, they need a mobility service. exactly. And so they would come to you and say, we have this huge neighborhood with everybody dependent on their car. I want AVs, what should I do?
William (08:17)
They need mobility service.
Exactly and that's where and I think ⁓ public transit operators they are used to that they can propose different things they can propose on demand solution they can propose bus lines they can propose different things they are used to answer on ⁓ mobility needs not on just a bus lines you know ⁓ and vehicles and honestly we
Henriette Cornet (08:47)
a vehicle.
William (08:52)
In the industry, we focus a lot about the vehicles. And I think also in the US, maybe that's something we can discuss because I went to the US a few weeks ago. But I feel like what we call the AV industry, or at least the robotaxi industry is clearly not an automotive industry.
You have maybe the autonomous driving, it's an automotive technology, but the robot taxi industry is clearly not automotive. And you see it in all kinds of discussions when you discussed responsibility, when you discuss safety, you can see the point of view, the different perspective
Henriette Cornet (09:28)
so back to this imaginary client who describe to you exactly the service the expectations regarding the service and you will work together you will start working together on this checklist that you mentioned can you give more detail on this checklist really imagining that you the only entry point you have
with this customer is knowing more or less the type of service that this person needs. maybe the person has an idea of the number of passengers that has to be transported at the time of the day, maybe some percent of the population with special needs, et cetera. So how do you move from there? Isn't it like a question also of budget that will come at some point, or is it too early or is it, so when does that come?
William (10:07)
⁓
When I have business discussion is one of the first topics that comes because a lot of customers come and say, wow, it's shining, I want that. But they have no budget, nothing. And so they maybe imagine that we can do that just for publicity, et cetera. It's not. And today...
automated services, they still cost more than driven services I don't know the exact metric for all AV providers, but for sure for most of them it's clearly expensive and more than driven services. From my experience, it's like two times or two and a half times what driven services cost.
Henriette Cornet (10:41)
Yeah, do you have a range of...
Mm-hmm, I see.
William (10:51)
So really it's
more expensive but the promise is that if you know exactly what you're buying and what you're trusting and what you're committed in the long run or the mid run, if you commit with partners that have this view on
security and operational commitment that are building a solution for the future. You know that in the future time you can remove the operator from the vehicles and have this metric of number of people per vehicle that can give you a view on profitability and
Henriette Cornet (11:19)
Mm-hmm.
William (11:37)
and total cost of operation compared to driven services. I clearly don't believe you will improve the total cost of operation by 50 % or 60 % like somewhat sometimes we can see. We can read that. Yeah and clearly I don't believe that one second. ⁓
Henriette Cornet (11:50)
We read that. I read it this morning again.
So maybe just
for the listeners, for the audience, what we're referring to, both of us we know and we went maybe a bit too quick on that, is that there is this promise since the cost linked with the wages, the driver's wages is approximately between 40 and 60%, depending on the regions, there was this imaginary conception, I don't know, concept that if you remove the driver, you gain.
directly this 40 % or 60 % cost of operation, which of course is not correct. So maybe we can make a little parenthesis and stay a little bit on that because this imaginary person that will come to you may ask as well, okay, it cost more, 2 times, 2.5 times more, but can I expect in five, 10 years, some kind of cost?
William (12:36)
Yeah.
Henriette Cornet (12:53)
benefit because the other benefits we can also come back to that. But yet what would you answer to this aspect of the cost savings?
William (13:02)
Yeah, so clearly I think it's in terms of so first pure cost, it's...
It's maybe more investment, know, capex, because you have to invest on vehicles that are more expensive and you need to have control centers and you need to deploy the vehicle. know, with driven vehicles or driven buses, you buy a car and you can drive it. It's you have almost no setup cost. With autonomous vehicles, you need that
period of calibration in each city or each territory where you will deploy and service. So you have this cost at the beginning that is quite expensive because you need people in the vehicle, you need people in the control centers, you know people on the field and no revenue at this stage. So clearly this first period of time where clearly it's expensive. But then if you have committed with good partners
Henriette Cornet (13:36)
Mm-hmm.
William (14:01)
again that have solutions safe enough to remove all purchase from the vehicle and that you are committed on a certain period of time where the service period is longer and clearly longer than this setup period at the beginning. You have this
slight improvement of cost during this commercial operation and basically at the end if you look at the five year, six year period you can have you know good metrics on the cost.
Henriette Cornet (14:33)
Yeah. And also.
William (14:33)
Again, not saying that
you will improve by 50%, but you will clearly have better metrics than for a short period of time and building the future to understand and know how to scale after. So that's the first point. Commit to longer period with the good partners.
But you also have this transition to new jobs because I don't know in the robot taxi business, but in the transit business, we lack a lot of drivers in Europe.
10,000 in France and there are a lot of studies that say we will lack like 200,000 drivers by 2030 in the EU and so we are shifting the average driver today is more than 60 years old, the average one. Okay so we really have this shift where if you want
more services, more mobility services in the territories, you need to rely on different jobs than drivers. That's a fact. so autonomous driving technology will help us keep and improve services with that demographic shift.
Henriette Cornet (15:33)
Yep. Yep.
Yeah, I
think that's extremely central in the reason also to why to develop this technology. And I have several questions based on everything you said already. I can address that very quickly, the topic of revenue, like generation or return on investment
William (15:52)
to develop that.
and
Henriette Cornet (16:04)
the flexibility that you gain and that you can attract new riders that you did not have before and with an increase of ridership also kind of generating more revenue. kind of exactly, exactly. So that's also the aspect I think it's a...
William (16:09)
Exactly.
more and more and that is a good cycle.
Henriette Cornet (16:23)
to be mentioned and it's not really always comparing one to one service. Like we are speaking of really opening new mobility services and new areas of how people are moving around and yeah.
William (16:27)
Exactly.
Yeah, a new generation of mobility services
to attract more people and put them sometimes out of their personal car and take those services.
Henriette Cornet (16:44)
Exactly. Reduce the
way I put it is reduce the dependency on car.
William (16:50)
Reduce the dependency?
Yeah, there are some people that just cannot drive. There are some people that you need to get out of their second, third car and increase the KPI of the number of people per car. You need to that to reduce congestion on the roads. That's something we are targeting.
Henriette Cornet (17:07)
Mm-hmm.
And the other question, basic question for this person do you have already an answer to the question between buying an autonomous shuttle, an automated shuttle versus leasing one? What do you, is there an answer or how would you answer this question?
William (17:17)
Mm.
Hmm.
Also good question. It's a good link also with what we were saying in terms of period. You need to commit to a certain period if it's for few months. First it will be very expensive and it will be just for communication. Usually I say if you want something serious it's at least two years and you can...
Henriette Cornet (17:55)
Interesting,
William (17:57)
just to have a concrete number. Usually that's what I say. Commit on two years, that's a way to profit from the setup part from the beginning and you really enjoy your service and install something good. In terms of buying or leasing,
It's, I would say it's shifting. For a lot of years, I was saying to not buy because we know for sure the vehicle will not sustain more than one or two years because there are still prototypes because the safety...
Henriette Cornet (18:22)
Mm-hmm.
The tech is evolving.
William (18:31)
Yeah,
the tech is evolving in passenger cars every year also and you still buy cars. But what I meant is that it was still prototypes in the sense of the safety is not proven and the equipment needed to commercially operate are not there. If you are sure you are committed with a serious partner that can prove the safety,
and that have all the equipment you need in the vehicle, now you can buy them. But before committing that, you need to be very clear on the specifications.
We have a full specification list, very detailed. It's like 170 lines, saying exactly what we need to have before committing to buy vehicles. But if you have everything, and if the provider commits you and says it can be homologated, it can be at a commercial...
Henriette Cornet (19:15)
you
William (19:32)
great. Now you can you can commit on buying some vehicles.
Henriette Cornet (19:37)
Do we have a range there? Do you think there is a figure how much a shuttle costs these days? Can you share? Don't violate any NDA you may have. My impression is in the range 300-500k, I don't know, euro. That's kind of the range I have in mind.
William (19:53)
Yeah,
they are all between like 250 and 500k. But still very expensive if you compare that to the number of passengers you can move.
Henriette Cornet (19:59)
Okay, yep, that's sort of what it's about.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, because we are talking about like is it 12 or how many? Oh Okay, even even less
William (20:13)
between 6 and 8 people usually in the shuttle so even less so
you see 300, 250k to move 8 people is still very expensive
Henriette Cornet (20:26)
mentioned control centers, which I also know it's one of your favorite topics. And there I can imagine that many, but maybe you wouldn't know the threshold at what size a city would have for its bus system, a type of fleet management system, know, like, or a fleet management system that is evolved enough.
William (20:31)
Cheers.
Henriette Cornet (20:48)
that could be useful for integrating autonomous vehicles. And maybe it's too optimistic from my point of view to think one can build on the other, but that's why I'd like your opinion on that. Is that possible or do you think even if they have, you know, I visited the one from from Ruter in Oslo, an
very sophisticated control centers that they have for their buses, for their bus fleets, which is very big in Oslo. And I was wondering if then it helps for the next step of having autonomous vehicles. My first impression was actually maybe not. Maybe they do something first separate. So all these topics. So I'm curious, how do you see that you have sure visited so many ⁓ of these type of centers? So is it helpful for?
William (21:30)
Yeah, that's...
Henriette Cornet (21:34)
later managing a fleet of AVs or is it two different jobs, different technologies?
William (21:38)
I think it's
very useful at least for the experience and knowledge and know human experience and type and it really crosses what we were saying in terms of on one hand you have kind of the automotive
point of view, we are making vehicles drive by themselves. And on the other side, you have operators that want mobility services and knows how to manage control centers. And what I'm seeing is that there's only few actors that can link two point of views. Some AV providers are building remote control.
Henriette Cornet (22:13)
Mm-hmm.
William (22:20)
I wouldn't say control centers, but remote capabilities most of the time to support driving to avoid showing their vehicles stuck in the middle of the road. actually control centers, when you look at an operational perspective, control centers, they gather all the functionalities into four families. The first one is support the driving, as we said.
Henriette Cornet (22:25)
Mm-hmm.
William (22:42)
you have all the mission management, know, scheduling, etc. And make sure that dispatch, like the dispatching mission management or everything that we can call that in, you know, scheduling. The third one is the field management, something that maybe all the YouTube videos about Waymo's you see are...
Henriette Cornet (22:49)
Dispatching, all of that, yeah.
William (23:04)
mismatch on this one because they manage perfectly the vehicle and the driving but managing the field is very difficult when you come from an automotive perspective because from an automotive perspective you don't do that the customer the driver that and here when you operate a mobility service you need to know the field what happens on the field if a road is closed if there is an emergency somewhere if an industry
Henriette Cornet (23:30)
A power outrage.
William (23:32)
Exactly,
if a street is flooded, you need to know that and that's something that we know in control centers for driven buses, for metros, for tramways, that's information we have so we can
know, impact on the service and tell the drivers to stop or not go on the streets, etc. So that's the job of control centers. And that's why you have control centers, even for automatic metros, you have control centers or tower controls for airplanes, etc. And that's what we were saying, it's not because the driving is automated, that you don't have humans and that you don't have remote control centers to
Henriette Cornet (23:53)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
William (24:16)
to leverage and on top of the driving to have a service and not only of vehicle driving.
I mean if you have only 10 buses or 10 taxis you don't need control centers. With AVs, if you have two vehicles you have to have one. You have to have remote control centers. So that's something very different because the industry, the mobility industry is used to having this equipment and control centers infrastructure to be dependent on the territory.
Henriette Cornet (24:28)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
William (24:49)
So that's a shift in the thinking. It's not something optional and local. It's something compulsory and global.
Henriette Cornet (24:57)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember discussions we had in the past about this harmonizing, standardizing also this type of discussions would help the industry tremendously.
William (25:08)
a lot. Yeah, on a daily basis. On a daily basis, four years now, and that's why it's, I can see it's a long job.
Henriette Cornet (25:11)
But you're working on it, You're actively... Exactly, exactly. So we will get there.
Okay, so back to my clients, my imaginary client. So the person now has a better idea of the service, can got a sense you work together already on the specification, still from the operation side of the vehicle. Is there, and I mentioned it as an introduction, what about the infrastructure required?
It could be, you know, that the person is so excited about AVs, but the client will say, you know, my city, there is no way we can have pick up and drop off point because the streets are built this way or this way, So for many reasons, they feel that the physical infrastructure may be a constraint or they say we don't have any digital infrastructure.
⁓ in place etc so what what about that what about the infrastructure and your advice
I don't know, a city would say, I don't have any markings on the ground. Or my signage are very poor in my city, my lane marking is very poor. Can still a AV drive there?
Would you also play the role of telling them you need to update your road first?
William (26:32)
Yeah, that's
something we do in the deployment. The first phase is making the first safety analysis, a global one, with the AV provider.
we select it and check if it's globally okay. then in, you know you have the the safety case really of the driving, but when you go on an operation we are trying to build the operational safety case with three different pillars. The first one is the vehicle itself, the second one is the operators, whether they are in the vehicle or on the field. You have procedures,
Like anything, you buy a microwave, you have a manual that tells you exactly what you can do, what you cannot do with the technology. That's the same with AVs. You have clear procedures that make sure you can use the vehicle well and deploy it well. And the third pillar is the infrastructure.
and we have partners, we have a partner for France and we're building partners for other countries that can bring this part if needed for example if you need stations, if you need marking for instance
Henriette Cornet (27:42)
Exactly.
William (27:44)
that's really the point to build this local operational case is to make sure that you have all the three pillars right and aligned to go to operations
Henriette Cornet (27:56)
And I don't know if you share this view, but for me, a message that I try to convey most of the time is that if they invest in all that, if they renew the road markings, the signage, the visibility, et cetera, it will also beneficiate human drivers actually, or if suddenly the station,
William (28:18)
Thanks.
Henriette Cornet (28:20)
the pick up and drop off point are easier for AVs, it will be easier for other services as well. And with the digital layer, it's probably the same. If you kind of make an update on your digital system, it will be beneficial independently of the type of technology you put in place. So that's try for encouragement I'm trying to give.
William (28:37)
Exactly, that's
a very good point. makes me think about two things. First, on the infrastructure. Clearly, that's funny because the industry is focusing a lot on the 94 % of the accidents are due to human errors and so this will be safer.
Henriette Cornet (28:56)
human hero.
William (28:58)
There are a lot of studies on that from the NHTSA in the US. because that's a human driving, but if the infrastructure is poorly designed, it can lead to human errors ⁓ in the driving. So as you said, clearly improving the infrastructure clearly helps road safety.
Henriette Cornet (29:16)
Everybody. Yeah.
William (29:18)
On the data topic, it's also...
very good stuff helping driven services. As we were saying, in very small fleets, you don't have this digital layer and you rely a lot on the humans, in the drivers. I had the chance to visit really big networks of like 300 vehicles and very small networks.
Henriette Cornet (29:33)
Mm-hmm.
William (29:44)
in very small networks, have nothing digital, you have drivers, they are talking to you in the evening and that's it. Today I'm working at BETI and we're part of a group, it's like 100 buses,
We don't have a lot of digital solutions for driven vehicles. When we start building the solutions to check the AVs in the morning and make sure that the operators clearly apply the procedures to be safe and to make sure that the responsibility is clear between the AV providers and the operator. When we start building that, they saw the potential having clear vehicle checks
and traceability of the issues.
we need to track and we need to solve about the vehicles and say okay sometimes the driver comes, he takes the bus and there is no fuel and he loses sometimes and then it's late for the service. It's clear revenue loss because you have not checked the vehicles and you have not remembered the checks of the day before. So yes, digital solutions. Again, compulsory even if you have two AVs.
Henriette Cornet (30:46)
Mm-mm.
William (30:51)
are clearly helpful for all given services.
Henriette Cornet (30:53)
Super helpful. Okay.
Okay, okay. So now we have two shuttles running and you are, you personally are tracking them with your dashboard and you check everything on them. Maybe you can share a little bit what is on this dashboard and what the client will see.
William (31:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Henriette Cornet (31:14)
with this dashboard and we can maybe also link and put some visualization for the people watching now And I hope it's not too much. I mean, in terms of like data information, because remember the clients don't have background knowledge in AV.
William (31:14)
Hmm.
You know.
No, no.
Exactly, that's your point and that's
why we built it in three different layers, let's say, because there are different local stakeholders. You have obviously the operator, the insurance,
the local authority, and they all need to know and be reassured and know what's happening on the field with the service and the vehicles. And then in different information, they don't need all the technical, the insurance and the authority, they don't need all the technical stuff. The operator, that they are the responsibility and everything on the service, he needs more information. So we have these three different layers. The first one is a basic overview
Henriette Cornet (31:51)
because they need different information.
William (32:12)
mainly for the customer, the authority and the insurance, where you have the kilometers driven, the percentage in autonomous mode, the passengers, the occupation of the road, if they need to implement a specific...
road regulation, for example they want to create a business model for occupying stations, occupying the street etc. They have this view of road occupation. And you have the number of collisions. That's global overview, simple metrics. The second one is the performance.
Henriette Cornet (32:34)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
William (32:45)
view and basically it takes all the public transit KPIs so punctuality availability and the customer feedbacks. And the third one is clearly in-service monitoring.
Dashboard so you have all the human intervention you have all what we call the weak signal because we're trying All the points to monitor the safety is to prevent Incidents and not witness accidents.
So we are able to track that and to know exactly what happens. We can localize everything to know and to improve stuff. So that third part is more technical and clearly only for the operator and to discuss with the AV providers.
Henriette Cornet (33:34)
Yeah, every providers and also what I understand the way you look at everything is make sure you get the best from the market. So to say, because then you can measure the performance of each providers after a while and then you can you can see also which one operate better. Without a need to make that public, but at least the client gathers information on which one is most suitable for their service.
William (33:42)
No.
Yeah, okay.
for the commercial service. And again, it can be different ⁓ on different ODD or different territory or different situation, but I think it's beneficial for everyone in the value chain, even for the AV providers that sometimes they want to keep data private or et cetera. I think transparency
makes a lot for trust and for scaling.
And even more if you have countries or territories that cannot invest a lot. Usually, know, in Europe we say, okay, let's take two vehicles. We'll see what happens. And after that, we'll commit. We don't have yet, I hope we will, but we don't have yet cities that say, okay, I'm buying 500 vehicles and let's see what happens. No, we don't have that. know, we are waiting for some...
really concrete stuff and proof before going further. So think that's why it's important to track everything, to create trust on both sides. ⁓
Henriette Cornet (34:53)
Yeah, trust, knowledge in general, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Okay, what after exactly this phase? When we have the trust, when we are happy with our two shuttles, the population is super happy. They want more. The customers, not customer, really, the end users, the riders want more of them. Like, it's a success with these two shuttles. Everything went fine and your dashboard was only positive for them. What's next? How can we scale further in this ideal situation, let's considering
the impression I have is there are not many shuttles on the market simply you know so that's kind of where my question is leading is what after that so you say no there is no city asking for 500 shuttles but nobody can produce now 500 shuttles
William (35:43)
Yeah, yes. Nobody I know can produce 500 shuttles that matches.
Henriette Cornet (35:48)
Maybe in China, maybe I'm
a bit too quick, but from European and US players, I'm not aware of the possibility of having 500 shuttles.
William (35:59)
I'm not aware of any players yet capable of producing 500 vehicles matching the specification that European public transit operators need. That's the difficulty but I would see it as an opportunity for cities or operators and seeing that if you build this I'm buying 500.
Henriette Cornet (36:13)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
William (36:20)
and that we should know and operators should know I did it but only for few vehicles I have no clients yet to buy 500 but we have all the knowledge to know exactly what we should have as vehicle performance as vehicle equipments for example the performance in transit you need to be able to
to dock very precisely to the sidewalk. ⁓ cannot say the vehicle will stop in the middle of the road and...
Henriette Cornet (36:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, approximately.
William (37:00)
You have precise specifications for all buses, with the metro, etc. So you need to be very close. So that's one performance specification. You have specifications on the equipment you need to have on the vehicles. For example, intercom for passengers to be able to call control centers. That's something that you have.
Henriette Cornet (37:16)
Mm-hmm.
William (37:20)
in all the metro already, etc. So again, nothing new, but some specification you need to have. And I'm looking at the vehicles available today. You don't have that today. So, performance, equipment, then you have all the safety and demonstration specifications. Saying that I have two vehicles running, doesn't say anything.
Henriette Cornet (37:20)
Metro
William (37:40)
And so that's why from a local perspective, you need to be very clear on what you need. And that's why I think your imaginary customers need to be very supported on that.
not to spend two years on the deployment and lose every budget he has on deployment and not on service.
Henriette Cornet (37:58)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, exactly. No, that was exactly my point. How to make sure that what he would build with this pilot would be able to scale later. Yeah, it can last and can beneficiate in terms of all these layers that we had. So yeah, I guess what you see with the having kind of call for like 500 vehicles would be kind of the next step. The next thing I would love to see in Europe and in the US,
William (38:04)
your last.
Henriette Cornet (38:23)
I would like to see more public actors involved and really
wanting really like hungry for kind of innovation technology and testing and discovering and Yeah, let's see. Let's see where it goes. I know that a topic I'm gonna investigate more in the future and probably try to do some some episodes on that with with dedicated expert is a topic of procurement and joint Procurement. I know in Belgium. It's happening I know within Germany that they are trying to do that because they have procurement system for each Laender
and having joining forces and say, let's all agree what you say exactly. Let's all agree on the specification list and all it could be even like really EU wide. We have the same specification and we need now altogether it's thousand vehicles and suddenly for an AV provider. And I'm thinking of one like, HOLON which I've an article recently that they have difficulty because there is not enough demand. So they don't have enough requests for buying.
William (38:56)
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I've heard that from many AV providers, then it's the snake story. Exactly. I was interested. Yeah, but the cities and operators, don't see any products, so they don't know what to buy. And so that's why exactly we should gather and...
Henriette Cornet (39:24)
So vehicles, yeah.
Yeah. Chicken egg. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. Exactly.
William (39:46)
And again, this specification is not that difficult if you need or if anyone needs help. We did write that so we don't have the pipe for 500 vehicles, but we did that job to write the specification so we can support anyone with that. And that will be very useful because in the market I only see maybe Uber as committed to a lot of vehicles.
Henriette Cornet (40:09)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
William (40:10)
Maybe they have clear specification to make the market move, but otherwise, as you say, joint procurement may be the only way to move forward. Yeah.
Henriette Cornet (40:19)
At this stage, at least at this stage
of where the technology is, where kind of the state of the art, I think it would be extremely helpful for these new providers such as HOLON you know, they are building this factory in Florida, in Jacksonville, and it's so promising and having, I think they want to achieve thousand, 2000 vehicles per year, something like that. That's for me, that's really like, I can't wait, but...
they need commitment from the other side that someone will buy them. They can't build all these vehicles and then there is no customer for it. yeah, so let's see how it goes. I'll dig into this topic and I'd be happy to have you join Urban Innovate Talks again to discuss all that and see how it has evolved. Do you have any additional topics, something you want to add on this topic of like for this imaginary client?
William (40:45)
Thanks.
No, if you write
a global specification, just don't forget what's on top of the vehicle. If you have just a vehicle, you will not have a service. So let's not forget what's on top of it. And that's it. It's a system exactly. You don't have an automatic metro running, just having...
Henriette Cornet (41:15)
Exactly. What's all surrounding, so to say, is Yeah. It's a system.
William (41:25)
the rolling stock, you have everything around. So basically that's what's the most important thing about the service and the system, not only the vehicle and the steering wheel.
Henriette Cornet (41:25)
The Metro. Yeah.
Good advice.
I that's a great final word if we can take it for that, encouragement as well. Not a discouragement, there is a lot of things to be done, nice things to be done with the technology. So I invite everybody to get in touch with you if they want to know more about the specifications, the dashboard, where to start, et cetera, and make it more concrete. There are nice things happening in...
Again, my favorite transit agency Ruter is opening a request for information, which I invite everybody to check because it gives also a sense of how authorities thinking about exactly these requirements and the value chain and the expectations they may have. I think that's for the people listening to us could be interesting to look at. yeah, let's talk again soon and make sure we continue the discussion. Thanks a lot for the three episodes we had.
we tackled a lot of topics and we keep definitely in touch. Thanks, William.
William (42:35)
Is it? Yeah.
Thank you.