Arcimoto, a developer of electric vehicles (EVs), has announced a partnership with autonomous driving firm Faction Technology (Faction) and driverless tour company GoCar Tours to provide up to 310 driverless EVs for tourists to use in select locations.
The EVs will use Faction’s DriveLink and TeleAssist technologies and GoCar’s patented GoCar Network technology, with the partnership commencing a 20-vehicle pilot programme in Las Vegas this year.
If the pilot is successful, GoCar plans to begin a phased deployment of up to 290 more vehicles at GoCar locations in Las Vegas, San Francisco and San Diego, and later in Barcelona, Spain.
“This is a confluence of three cutting-edge technologies: the rightsized Arcimoto electric vehicle architecture, Faction’s driverless technology and GoCar’s award-winning GPS-guided tours,” said Jesse Fittipaldi, interim CEO of Arcimoto.
“Building on GoCar’s proven business model, we believe this is a perfect fit for the sustainable tourism industry today, and will be a key step in our plans to deploy driverless fun utility vehicles (FUVs) for everyday transportation in the future.”
GoCar’s driverless tourism vehicles are designed to allow users to explore cities at their own pace and offer a GPS-guided tour that gives directions, cracks jokes, recommends restaurants and more.
Faction’s DriveLink and TeleAssist technologies will be deployed to support GoCar EVs to both drive autonomously and via remote human teleoperation.
According to Faction, its technology is intended for use in autonomous driving systems and offers advanced teleoperation abilities, precise vehicle positioning, hazard recognition and vehicle design to accommodate short urban journeys.
