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The Startup That Beat Uber to Self-Driving Taxis

Uber is launching self-driving taxis today in Pittsburgh. But nuTonomy's first public trial of self-driving taxis happened last month in Singapore.
Image: Courtesy of nuTonomy

Uber announced that it would soon be debuting its self-driving cabs in Pittsburgh last month, and the cars are hitting the road today. But an MIT spinoff startup managed to get there first, halfway across the world.

How did Cambridge-headquartered nuTonomy put their cars on the road ahead of Uber and other contenders? By working with an unlikely partner—the Singapore government. "There are a lot of countries in the world that want to have self-driving cars on their streets, and within the past two weeks, I've had inbound emails from cities around the world that want this technology. But what Singapore did, was actually take material steps to putting cars on the road," said nuTonomy's CEO Karl Iagnemma. To reach its goal, the Singapore government positioned itself as the ideal test market for self-driving cars and laid out clear regulatory guidelines for companies such as nuTonomy to enter and begin development. They also sweetened the pot by inviting nuTonomy to partner with the Singapore Land Transport Authority, which Iagnemma viewed as a great incentive for a young startup. The first public trial of the company's self-driving cars was launched at the end of August.

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Karl Iagnemma. Image: Courtesy of nuTonomy

Two-thirds of the nuTonomy team is now based in Singapore, which is seen by the startup as the idealplace to test autonomous vehicles. This has to do with Singapore's solid infrastructure, good weather and driving climate—where drivers tend to adhere to road rules, Iagnemma told me. Singapore's strict regulatory environment helped too, since self-driving car technology has no precedence when it comes to safety standards and acceptance criteria.

In the US, those standards vary dramatically across the country. While the state of California looked to ban vehicles without drivers, the mayor's office in Texas welcomed the technology with open arms. It's likely that general regulatory uncertainty across states has slowed the deployment of self-driving technology in the US, while Singapore has managed to lay out the groundwork without much resistance. "We've been really impressed by the coordination between the government agencies in Singapore. In the US, when dealing with various agencies, you get different responses around the same technology and regulatory questions," Iagnemma said. "Singapore is a very small country, so they're perhaps more able to present a unified front—but to their credit, they moved quickly and pulled it off."

"It's all about the motto, innovate or die."

A small island nation of just over five million, the Southeast Asian country has managed to stay ahead of the curve by adapting to cutting edge technology. For what it lacks in land size (it measures just 50 kilometers from the east to the west), manpower and natural resources, it makes up for in ambition.

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"It's all about the motto, innovate or die—you need to be continuously innovating and be ahead of the trends," said Niels de Boer, Program Director at the Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Vehicles, a local university-run testing hub for self-driving cars. "Especially for Singapore, when you've got no materials to dig out of the ground to export, and you don't have big spaces to manufacture on, the services need to be cutting edge." De Boer sees self-driving cabs as a solution to Singapore's manpower issues, and also an ideal way to relieve congested roads. In the past, Singapore has sought to limit the number of privately owned vehicles on the road by requiring citizens to bid for a car license, which is tied to astronomical fees. As the country becomes more prosperous, de Boer said the mechanism becomes less effective as high prices will no longer be seen as a deterrent.

A nuTonomy taxi in Singapore. Image: Courtesy of nuTonomy

"So how to get people out of cars and make other modes of transport more attractive? There's been big investments into the subway network, but there's also the issue of getting to the subway and your final destination. So I see these self-driving vehicles as a complementary service to the existing transport network as opposed to a replacement," he said. While most people think that self-driving cars will eventually replace all private vehicles and taxis on the road, the self-driving cabs in Singapore's future is meant to be a public transport extension. Also known as a "first and last mile application," passengers will be ferried from their home to the metro station, then they can opt to take a self-driving cab from the train to their final destination.

Read more: Uber Begins Its Endgame: Replacing Humans

Being the first in the world to introduce self-driving cab trials isn't Singapore's only bid to stay globally competitive. For years, the government has been busy creating a business-friendly environment complete with low taxes, which makes Singapore a go-to launchpad for global tech giants and startups thinking about expanding into the Asia-Pacific region.

"They've put a lot of services online to make starting a business quick and efficient, and streamlined processes such as paperwork, immigration, import and transport of goods," said de Boer. "They've also invested into their national fibre optic network, which has given businesses access to fast Internet and enables them to participate in the digital economy."

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