Germany To Add Self-Driving Cars To Train Service

Germany To Add Self-Driving Cars To Train Service

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Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s railway operator, is looking to add self-driving cars to its mass-transit network. The company’s goal is to add service in the last leg of the journey, effectively extending its services to the gap from the customer’s door the the train station itself.

Reedier Grube, Deutsche Bahn’s CEO, told the German business magazine WirtschaftsWoche that the company already makes trains a great alternative to driving, as they allow customers to spend their travel time effectively. “If in the future autonomous cars can do this, then the operators of these cars can claim the same about their services. That’s why we will have to add autonomously driving cars to our offering,” he said.

Grube told the weekly paper that the company “will, with certainty, operate driverless cars in the future,” however he gave no timeline for implementation.

Gizmodo reports that this issue has been in talks at Deutsche Bahn for quite some time now. An internal strategy document emphasises the importance of “end-to-end service” and “multimodal mobility.” It proposes self-driving cars to be part of an “integrated land transport system.”

In such a scheme, a car could be summoned for you when you’re about to arrive at the station. It would take you to your final destination, only to take off to complete another drop-off after you disembark.

Beyond cars, Deutsche Bahn plans to automate the trains themselves. If under the current system a human dispatcher instruct an engineer on where to take the train, in the future, a computer could remotely handle all these tasks.

“In one or two decades, trains could be controlled from the operations center,” gruve said.