(QCOSTARICA) Costa Rica’s continuing battle between the taxi drivers and Uber and the government having to mediate, may have a solution, as the world’s first public self-driving taxi pilot program is now underway in Singapore.
According to recent reports, the nuTonomy’s ride hailing app is now available in Singapore’s one-north business district, the same district that the firm has been doing testing in since April.
The company anticipates a full-scale launch in 2018.
It seems Singapore’s government is in a hurry to get an autonomous taxi service up and running, selecting only last month, nuTonomy to partner with the Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA).
The commercial autonomous taxi service uses the Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric vehicles that have been outfitted with various sensors and computing systems.
Important to note that nuTonomy is currently testing out its self-driving car technology in Michigan (U.S.) and in the UK as well.
Is Costa Rica on the horizon? Perhaps the Costa Rican government could take note. However, we can foresee some of the challenges (of engineers to program) the cars to deal with drivers in Costa Rica.