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Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has announced that self-driving car service Cruise will start operating two Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles (EVs) this month to prepare digital maps for its self-driving cars.
The move follows a recent agreement between RTA and General Motors (GM) majority-owned autonomous vehicle unit Cruise to operate autonomous vehicles as a taxi and e-Hail service in Dubai.
A statement from the RTA said the process is a prelude to the actual launch of the service in 2023, making Dubai the first city in the world to commercially operate Cruise’s self-driving cars outside the United States.
Two Chevrolet Bolt EVs will initially be deployed on Jumeirah Street, driven by professional drivers. Cruise’s technology uses a high-resolution map of the physical environment, created using a dedicated mapping vehicle equipped with an array of sensors (including LiDAR, cameras, etc.), and driven throughout the city to collect data, which is then used to create and Maintain a navigation map for autonomous vehicles (AVs).
Cruise shares GM’s vision that self-driving cars can help create a safe, less crowded future for all, delivering enormous benefits to society in the form of improved safety and mobility. These efforts will clearly advance GM’s vision of zero collisions, zero emissions and zero congestion.
Mattar Al Tayer, RTA Director General and Chairman of the Executive Board, said: “Preparing the digital map is an essential step in the operation of Cruise Origin’s autonomous vehicles, which will be deployed in limited numbers next year to provide taxi and e-Hail services.”
“We plan to gradually increase the number of deployed vehicles to 4,000 vehicles by 2030 and strengthen Dubai’s pioneering role in autonomous mobility. This is an important step in realizing Dubai’s strategy for smart autonomous mobility, which aims to transform Dubai into 2030. Twenty-five percent of total trips will be converted to various autonomous vehicles,” he said.
“The operation of autonomous vehicles contributes to the integration of the transport system by easing the mobility of public transport passengers and helping them reach their final destination. It is very much in line with the first and last mile and the first and last mile approved by RTA last year. The last mile strategic journey sector to and from the nearest public transport point. It consists of two parts: group and individual,” added Al Tayer.
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