The CEO of MOIA, Volkswagen’s ridesharing business, has told Highways News that the company will be providing driverless services in Hamburg within four years.

Speaking on the Highways Voices podcast from the ITS World Congress in Hamburg, Robert Henrich explained that ridesharing services in the electric vehicles are already taking place but that autonomy was key to the future business.

“We start testing now with autonomous vehicles here in Hamburg, it’s happening now as we speak,” he said. “As of next year, and the year after, we’ll start doing test drives with customers. The goal really is by 24-25, to have a commercial ride pooling service without safety driving drivers, fully autonomous available here in Hamburg, because that is what then drives the cost farther down, which makes the service available to a broader group of customers. And what will help us to scale the service to increase the fleet size.”

When podcast host Paul Hutton commented that driverless services have always been “5-6 years away” for the last nine or ten years, Mr Henrich replied, “That that has indeed been the case, you know, in the last years, but I think it’s now happening. These vehicles now exist, you can see them you can touch them. We have exhibited our first ID bus vehicle, fully equipped… for self driving. It’s now finally happening but you are right, we have been waiting for quite some time for that to happen.”

You can hear the whole interview on today’s Highways Voices sponsored by SWARCO and GEWI here or hear some of Mr Henrich’s comments below..

(Picture – Highways News)