Autonomous minibuses: Hamburg's ambitious dream of a mobility revolution

At the beginning of this week, Sascha Meyer is standing at the Stadthaus Bridge He shivers at five degrees in the drizzle

The 41-year-old had recently returned from the USA Meyer had attended the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023 in mildly tempered Las Vegas, one of the world's largest technology trade fairs

The boss of Moia wears a turtleneck sweater, the color of which blurs between a dark orange and copper - strikingly close to the "Pluto yellow metallic" that adorns the company's electrically powered minibuses "No intention," says Meyer, laughing

The trends for the coming years are set at CES Originally conceived as a trade fair for consumer electronics, it has long been a kind of car show

It's about electric drives, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving Meyer is a sought-after man

In Hamburg, the Volkswagen subsidiary recently managed to become part of the local public transport system with its shuttle service On January 1st, Moia received approval as a scheduled service

The Pluto yellow of the vehicles is now just as much a part of the cityscape as the light ivory of Hamburg's taxis In general, Hamburg is aiming to become a model city in terms of transport

Last December, the Federal Ministry of Transport declared the city a mobility model region The federal government and the city have agreed on 240 joint projects, including the digitization of the hamburg s-bahn network and the application to host the World Congress of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP)

The focus is also on building a digitized urban mobility system "with the goal of 10,000 autonomous vehicles by 2030" The providers Moia, Ioki and others are to be integrated

There is no other German city, not even one in Europe, in which such an on-demand service - a shuttle service on call - works in addition to the S-Bahn, U-Bahn or bus of a similar size as in Hamburg There are test tracks and pilot projects, but nowhere else has such an extensive system been established

At peak times, up to 260 Moia buses will take passengers to their destinations, with soon to be 500 Even if not everything always works, many buses are often only half empty driving through the city: It should be a start

Together with Moia, the Hamburg traffic authority has big plans: by 2030, 10 000 electric buses will be on the road – not steered by people, but driving autonomously

Together with the expansion of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, they are intended to advance the mobility revolution Future topic of the automotive industry It is a huge undertaking that the city and the Volkswagen subsidiary are planning

If only because "certain topics with which we want to achieve our goals have not yet been developed," as the Green Transport senator anjes tjarks puts it Although autonomous driving is the future topic of the automotive industry, an autonomous shuttle suitable for public passenger transport has yet to be developed

Not to mention being approved by the authorities It is also the first time that private companies are so closely linked to public transport

Which raises the question what dependency such cooperation entails Sascha Meyer has been the boss of Moia since last August

Previously, as "Head of Product", he had played a key role in shaping the development The company has spread over two floors in the restored Stadthöfe in the city

The spirit of optimism of a start-up prevails Moia is an international company, the staff speaks English among themselves

The employees come from more than 40 countries, 300 developers work here and in Berlin on the mobile future The minibuses now cover almost 270 square kilometers of the city area, which is home to 1

3 million people In December they carried 195,000 passengers, 1

97 million in 2022, more than six million since the service started in 2019 "We had the support of the city early on," says Meyer in a loft-like conference room, "which meant a great deal of security for us

" Three depots were set up, a complex charging infrastructure was set up, and hundreds of drivers were hired "Hamburg is our development environment," says Meyer

“In contrast to other providers, we said: We put everything on one city We believe that ridepooling only works with high demand and a high supply density

” With Hamburg, a city of over a million inhabitants, Volkswagen will have a test laboratory and the opportunity to develop its mobility service to such an extent that it can also be rolled out in other cities – as an additional business area alongside the traditional one car production Not long now, according to Meyer, the company wants to expand into two more European cities

"Our wish is to be active throughout Europe," says Meyer "And what we are doing here together with the city of Hamburg is attracting attention on the market

" The cooperation with Moia is an opportunity for the city According to Senator Anjes Tjarks, Hamburg is dependent on high-tech companies like Moia, which have a great deal of “cash power” and the corresponding development potential

A municipal transport company alone cannot afford to develop an autonomous on-demand fleet It's extremely expensive

Tjarks believes that only with providers like Moia can the city keep the promise of the "Hamburg tact" and implement the mobility turnaround in the long term Hamburg-Takt means that by 2030 every Hamburger can reach a public mobility service within five minutes, no matter where

In practice it could look like this that a passenger is picked up by a shuttle within five minutes and taken to the nearest train station or into the city Economically only with mass In order to fill this concept with life, a correspondingly large shuttle fleet must be put on the road, according to the authority

On the one hand, because otherwise the Hamburg clock could not be implemented On the other hand, because only then can the shuttle service run economically

The shuttle service is still a loss-making business Moia boss Meyer does not give any figures, but says: "The project is an investment decision in the future

" How big the loss is likely to be can be seen from another similar project that the city is driving in the south To put it simply, Moia is mainly active north of the Elbe, while the south is served by provider Ioki

Ioki is a cooperation between Deutsche Bahn and the Hanseatic City The investments come from the city budget

According to the authority, every Ioki passenger will be subsidized with a low double-digit euro amount The staff alone, i

e the shuttle drivers, accounted for 60 percent of the costs

“It will only be a business model that is viable and scalable in itself when we have opened up the field of autonomous driving,” says Meyer A large autonomous fleet can be run in a completely different way: The vehicles can be used according to daily requirements, regardless of working hours and shift changes

The pulse of a big city like Hamburg is clearly defined: in the morning most people want to go downtown, in the evening back to the residential areas Autonomous vehicles could be parked in the outskirts at night, for example, in order to be available there in the morning

Empty runs would be avoided "A simple parking lot with a fence around it is enough," says Meyer

Experts also believe that the city is well positioned for the mobility change "Hamburg does a lot of things right," says Andreas Knie

"In order to master the climate crisis and free the narrow, congested inner cities from car traffic, it is not enough to say, everyone takes the bus and train " Knie is head of the research group "Digital Mobility and Social Differentiation" at the Social Science Research Center Berlin ( WZB)

"We built residential areas without thinking about fast access to public transport at the same time," says Knie "To the people who live in the outskirts, we can hardly say, it's six kilometers to the next station

” You have to pick them up where they live or work “The car showed us that going door to door is wonderful

If we want the mobility revolution, we have to offer something comparable ” The idea of ​​an on-demand service is known everywhere, says Knie

But Hamburg has seized the opportunity and is now at the forefront of development No real competitive situation The question of dependency remains

With Volkswagen, a powerful private partner with its own agenda is now part of public transport The traffic authority says they are not afraid of being cheated by Moia

You have a strong partnership with Volkswagen, both sides are dependent on each other And finally, with Ioki, you also have a second provider

The city is creating artificial competition, so to speak, in a market where there is actually no competition yet It is said that serious providers can be counted on one hand

Mobility services would have to be advertised later, but the market is not yet giving up Moia relies on a further development of the ID

Buzz, the electrically powered version of the VW Bulli, while the classic Moia models are based on the VW Crafter The autonomous buses will be smaller and therefore offer a little less space

On the one hand, this is due to the technical requirements for autonomous driving systems, says Meyer, but also to the conditions in the city: With smaller vehicles, it is easier to maneuver through the parked streets in Altona-Altstadt or "Winterhude-Downtown" The testing of autonomous driving is initially running with a single-digit number of buses around the depot in Wandsbek

Experts say that Moia relies primarily on the technology of the Israeli provider Mobileeye, which belongs to the chip manufacturer Intel Meyer nevertheless assumes that the classic Moias will continue to drive for a long time

On the one hand, the company now also offers several minibuses for people who are dependent on a wheelchair, and nothing should change about that "On the other hand," says Meyer, "there will be people right at the beginning who will say I won't get into an autonomous vehicle

" They won't be left standing on the street Moia relies primarily on the technology of the Israeli provider Mobileeye, which belongs to the chip manufacturer Intel

Meyer nevertheless assumes that the classic Moias will continue to drive for a long time On the one hand, the company now also offers several minibuses for people who are dependent on a wheelchair, and nothing should change about that

"On the other hand," says Meyer, "there will be people right at the beginning who will say I won't get into an autonomous vehicle " They won't be left standing on the street

Moia relies primarily on the technology of the Israeli provider Mobileeye, which belongs to the chip manufacturer Intel Meyer nevertheless assumes that the classic Moias will continue to drive for a long time

On the one hand, the company now also offers several minibuses for people who are dependent on a wheelchair, and nothing should change about that "On the other hand," says Meyer, "there will be people right at the beginning who will say I won't get into an autonomous vehicle

" They won't be left standing on the street nothing should change about that

"On the other hand," says Meyer, "there will be people right at the beginning who will say I won't get into an autonomous vehicle " They won't be left standing on the street

nothing should change about that "On the other hand," says Meyer, "there will be people right at the beginning who will say I won't get into an autonomous vehicle

" They won't be left standing on the street