Unlike the American focus on luxury personal self-drivers, the European approach favors small self-driving buses that can ferry riders to larger transit lines.
Transportation culture can be very different across the Atlantic, and that holds true when it comes to driverless vehicles. Unlike this country, where self-driving car developers focus on prestigious personal transport, the European focus is on augmenting well-developed transit systems that already exist.
Barely exceeding walking pace, many of these locally-developed vehicles fit into the self-driving bus category. They're designed to fill in that "first and last mile" between transit riders' homes and stations or stops.
Mark Scott writes, "Forgoing the latest automotive trends of aerodynamics and style, European transportation groups and city planners are instead aiming to connect these unglamorous driverless vehicles to existing public transportation networks of subways and buses."
"In total, more than 20 pilot or existing public transport programs have taken place in Europe involving autonomous vehicles [...] Most of these projects have received government funding, tapping into local research institutions and tech start-ups that are not household names."
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