This UK Company Is Testing Autonomous EV Vans Here

• UK-based autonomous tech developer Oxa is testing SAE Level 4 electric vans in the US and the UK, after starting robotaxi sedan testing in 2020.

• Oxa's Reference Autonomy Designs (RADs) allow for autonomous hardware and software to be fitted to a variety of mass-produced vehicles from different manufacturers.

• Several autonomous developers have created prototypes of driverless vans and shuttle buses, but these models have yet to launch on a city-wide scale in the US due to a variety of reasons.

Tesla may have gained a few more minutes of internet fame and Wall Street attention with its robotaxi event last month, which included the debut of a robovan concept, but a number of other companies are much further along when it comes to autonomous passenger vans.

One of these companies is UK-based Oxa, formerly known as Oxbotica, and it has been testing SAE Level 4 vehicles in the UK since 2020.

Oxa says it is now testing a Ford E-Transit-based autonomous van in the US in addition to Europe, with the model becoming the first mass-produced vehicles to be converted with the company's proprietary Reference Autonomy Designs (RADs).

The RADs permit what Oxa calls the rapid integration of autonomous hardware and software into production models, having been designed with a variety of different vehicles in mind. What's more, this hardware and software suite is designed to be integrated by third parties as well.

"RADs are defined, prototyped, and validated by Oxa, before being used by vehicle OEMs and approved upfitters to mass produce AVs, with flexible distribution and licensing models," Oxa notes.

Oxa's development of its own, configurable hardware and software suite follows years of testing of advanced autonomous systems in the UK, including Ford Mondeo-based robotaxis that debuted in October 2020.

The E-Transit-based vans, meanwhile, preview an operational ride-pooling service that could carry multiple passengers, and that could be summoned via a ride-hailing app, or perform delivery tasks.

But making the jump from a single sedan that transports one person or one party at a time to a minibus that can carry multiple people to different destinations is something that even US robotaxi industry leader Waymo hasn't launched at the moment, with a number of aspects of such a service remaining to be sorted out.

For one thing, there are safety monitoring considerations that apply to multi-person passenger vans in many jurisdictions that make them different from a taxi. And the number of cities that currently permit driverless, SAE Level 4 passenger cars isn't vast. Likewise, driverless cargo delivery largely remains in the trial stages by a number of developers.

Ultimately, the value proposition of such vans is that they would permit a ride-hailing company to carry more people to more destinations at a given time based on its own routing algorithms, allowing a fleet to field fewer vehicles while carrying the same number of passengers. So there are certainly savings there for robotaxi fleets.

"Making the Ford E-Transit available for autonomous operations is the next step on our journey to deliver safe, scalable, and sustainable autonomous solutions," said Gavin Jackson, CEO of Oxa. "This vehicle represents an important milestone in our mission to reshape the future of passenger transportation and logistics."

Time will tell if autonomous shuttle buses become commonplace in the US, but it's clear there are only a handful of prototypes at the moment capable of performing the same tasks as robotaxis. And most are still waiting for their wide-scale launch.

Will driverless shuttle buses become a common sight after 2030, at least in places like airports, or will most robotaxis in cities still be car-based? Let us know what you think in the comments below.