FiveAI to start a trial of its shared autonomous car fleet in London in 2019

After raising $35 million to develop driverless car technology and a strategy to build a fleet of shared vehicles, UK startup FiveAI is announcing its first on-street trial: a service aimed at commuters in the London outer boroughs of Bromley and Croydon. Projected to begin in late 2019, it will kick off first with a 10-month "data gathering" exercise, which will see five FiveAI vehicles, with drivers, collect information about road conditions, the movement of pedestrians and various vehicles, and other variables to help train its AI platform. The new trial will be the first on-street effort from the UK startup, which has up to now been testing its technology primarily in Bedfordshire, at automotive testing centre Milbrook Proving Ground, according to Ben Peters, FiveAI's VP of product who is also a co-founder of the company (alongside Stan Boland, Steve Allpress, John Redford and Simon Walker). The news of the London trial comes as TechCrunch has learned that FiveAI is also in the process of raising a new round of funding. While the $35 million FiveAI has raised to date is considered the highest amount of funding for an autonomous car company in Europe, it is a very modest figure when compared to startups in the US and China. Indeed, although transportation across Europe is estimated to be a $400 billion market, Peters estimates that no more than $100 million has been raised by autonomous driving startups in the region, versus around $8 billion by autonomous car startups the US, home to startups like Zoox and Nutonomy (which, like FiveAI, are building platforms that they plan to use in their own fleets), transportation providers like Uber, and car makers (which themselves are acquiring startup talent to kickstart their efforts), and tech giants like Google that approach cars like the next big hardware challenge.