Yahoo Autos The e.Go Mover Autonomous Electric Minibus Starts Production in 2019
Automotive supplier ZF and Germany’s e.Go have teamed up to create a people mover they believe can help alleviate traffic. The e.Go Mover electric and autonomous concept was just shown at ZF’s Technology Day, at the automotive supplier’s headquarters in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The bus concept can hold 15 passengers, 10 seated and five standing, and will use clever algorithms similar to Uber Pool and Lyft Line to make public transportation more efficient.
The concept was introduced by ZF CEO Wolf-Henning Scheider and e.Go CEO Dr. Günther Schuh. Schuh believes there is an immediate need for a vehicle of this type in the market. “We have to cover three revolutions at once,” he said, citing “traffic in cities, reducing carbon, and reducing poisonous NOx.”
Arwed Niestroj, vice president for global innovation hubs and digital transformation at ZF, and former CEO of Mercedes-Benz R&D North America, said that what many people don’t realize is autonomy alone won’t help solve traffic problems: “We have to get more people in per car, and fewer cars on the road. A concept like this could actually help with that.”
The e.Go Mover would initially be manually driven. The next step would be Level 4 autonomy, but for the first two or three years, a driver would still be present in the vehicle. ZF says there are already 72 customers-primarily cities in Germany and elsewhere in Europe-that have requested to be among the first to get the e.Go.
Schuh and Scheider both stressed that the electric platform is highly modifiable and able to accommodate customers’ needs for size, range, and other factors.
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Pilot projects will begin soon, with production of 400 Movers expected in 2019. We’re told that number will quickly rise, with 2000 to 3000 Movers built in 2020, and full one-shift production at the manufacturing plant in Aachen, Germany, of 15,000 units per year beginning in 2021.
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