Driverless-car goal by 2030 gains momentum amid Smart Dubai initiatives

Two Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles (EV) recently set in motion towards getting the 'smart' plan of an autonomous driving system on Dubai’s roads by mapping the streets for creating digital maps.

In a country which relies on motoring infrastructure, the two small cars from the General Motors-backed Cruise company herald a starting milestone of sorts and comes after a recent agreement signed by the Road Transport Authority (RTA) and GM to operate autonomous vehicles as taxi and e-hail services in Dubai.

The process is a prelude to the launch of the service next year, rendering Dubai the first city in the world to commercially operate Cruise self-driving vehicles outside the US, and whose operations are restricted to California.

On the occasion, Mattar Al Tayer, RTA's director-general and Chairman, said: "We’ve plans to increase the number of deployed vehicles gradually to reach up to 4,000 vehicles by 2030, and enhance Dubai’s pioneering role in self-driving transport (SDT)."

According to Al Tayer, Dubai has a smart SDT strategy that aims to convert 25 per cent of all vehicular traffic movements into driverless initiatives by 2030.

Global consultancy KPMG ranks the UAE among the top countries when it comes to readiness to accommodate driverless vehicles.

Yet, mapping the roads is hardly a stepping stone in charting unknown territory with a lot of other challenges, according to experts.

Seham El-Behissy, a former general manager of Renault, lists the multiple challenges and elaborates the various stages of the task at hand to move towards the dream.

"Private mobility is still a long road ahead. But yes, 2030 is a decent target for shared mobility [public transport in some form] because there are a lot of factors involved," said the Jordanian who quit her job early this year.

"But unlike what people think, it’s not the capabilities of the car that needs testing; the prototypes have been in place for a long time and being continuously tested — but there are various external challenges, and we are far from it.

"There are many challenges and there are many levels to each one. For instance, we cannot directly switch to driverless cars. We need to go semi-automatic first; connected cars prepared with as many data points made available to the driver first. But then each driver is different and h/her interpretation of the data will be different.

"Changing factors like weather or traffic congestion and the interpretation and driving styles of each person on the road can be different. Again, for instance, you can give a command to Siri or Alexa but then again, it has been found that they struggle to distinguish the voices of women compared to men, so how do you make sure everyone is on the same page on the road?” asked El-Behissy.

The single mother has come a long way in her over 15-year career. Initially, she started off as a programmer in Abu Dhabi, then led an all-women's team of 13 at a digital marketing agency and later rose through the ranks at Renault in Dubai, starting with leading a digital transformation with the local customer relationship management (CRM) team.

"When I started in 2006, the digital era hadn't started yet. But even further, I had to educate my colleagues and strive to make people understand that when you get a lead, you must respond within 30 minutes, not five working days. Even though I’m in the office, I’ve had to convert myself into a teacher."

Her optimistic outlook of getting somewhere on autonomous cars around 2030 is shared by RTA. But shared mobility is a good starting point.

— joydeep@khaleejtimes.com