The country's biggest fleet of low-speed, self-driving electric shuttles hit the road on Tuesday in a major step forward for the electric vehicle sector. The unveiling here adds momentum to an industry that is poised to get a significant boost from the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress. "We will write the next chapter in the world's transportation history -- in a time when we need a new chapter desperately," said Tyler Svitak, executive director of the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance, a sponsor of the shuttle system. The six-passenger miniature trolley-type vehicles from French company EasyMile are a sharp contrast to the large, diesel-burning buses known on many crowded college campuses. Each shuttle, called the Mines Rover, uses advanced sensors, cameras and LiDAR, which those involved say limit the risk of human error to about 94 percent of vehicle-related fatalities. A Mines student trained to oversee operations will ride on each vehicle.

EasyMile, which specialises in the design of autonomous shuttles and utility vehicles, has announced that it has raised €55 million in funding from Searchlight. The objective for the Toulouse-based company is to develop its autonomous solutions into concrete commercial offers. It also wants to export its brand internationally. Last week, EasyMile announced that it had raised nearly 55 million euros thanks to the investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners, L.P., with McWin and NextStage AM. Several historical investors also contributed to the transaction: Bpifrance, Continental and Alstom.

Sharad Agarwal has a prediction about driverless vehicles: "Autonomous public transportation is going to happen," he says, "and it's going to happen sooner than with taxis and cars." Agarwal leads the North American division of EasyMile, one of several startups offering autonomous vehicle shuttles to cities and transit agencies. He believes the relative simplicity of transit service makes it ideal for AV technology. With public transportation, "speeds are lower, distances are shorter, and the trips are repetitive," compared with automobile journeys. Companies like EasyMile have found a receptive audience among local officials, who were caught off guard a decade ago when another mobility innovation, ride hail, exploded onto the scene and siphoned off transit passengers.

At the ongoing the In ter na tional Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt, technology company Continental, together with the French company EasyMile, of which Continental has been a shareholder since 2017, are demonstrating the mobility of the future -- quite literally. Trade fair visitors can commute autonomously and powered only by electricity between two stops. The two companies have set up a demonstration track for a driverless Robo-Taxi between Hall 9 and the IAA Test Drive on the West Outdoor Area.German Chancellor Angela Merkel was one of the visitors to the fair who took a ride in the Cube robo taxi. The Robo-Taxi Cube is a Continental development platform for driverless vehicles technologies based on the EZ10 shuttle and driverless software from EasyMile. The shuttle service runs on all days of the fair during opening hours.

Financing of €11.7m obtained under the Bpifrance Invest for the Future Program (Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir -- PIA). Grenoble, February 6, 2019 -- Kalray (Euronext Growth Paris: ALKAL), a pioneer in processors for new intelligent systems, today announces the launch of the collaborative ES3CAP program[1], combining 11 industrial and academic partners, for which Kalray is the lead partner. The ES3CAP program, with a total budget of €22.2m over three years, will receive €11.7 million[2]in financing under the Invest for the Future Program[3], managed by Bpifrance, to contribute to finance the research activities. The objective of the ES3CAP project is to build a hardware and software platform for manufacturers developing critical applications that require high-performance computing capacity, in the fields of aeronautics (aviation, flying taxis, drones), defense and self-driving vehicles. It comprises an entire ecosystem of partners working on complementary aspects of operating systems and real-time, critical software tools, computer vision, data fusion and artificial intelligence, all on a reliable and secure hardware platform, Kalray's MPPA ("Massively Parallel Processor Array").

Tech company Continental is to acquire a minority stake in EasyMile SAS, a French autonomous driving company developing driverless electric shuttles. These shuttles will play a key role in the addressing the'first/last-mile' challenge in the future of mobility. In addition to Continental's equity investment in EasyMile, the companies plan to cooperate closely in the fields of environmental sensors, braking systems and driving safety technologies. This opens the door for Continental to numerous possible applications within EasyMile shuttles worldwide, while incorporating tried and tested large-scale production techniques from the automotive field. The first example is that the EasyMile EZ10 fleet will be running on Continental EcoContact tires with optimized tread geometry, ensuring low rolling resistance and rolling noise.

Want to receive a weekly deep dive into all things auto, transportation, & logistics tech? Click here to subscribe to our auto tech newsletter. Momentum in auto tech is at an all-time high, with investors funding private startups in the field at a record pace. Of course, much of the buzz has revolved around autonomous driving software, with startups like Zoox seeing $200M funding rounds, tech corporates looking to capitalize, and major automakers working feverishly to catch up. Validating the reliability of fully autonomous vehicles will be no small feat, with RAND estimating that tens or hundreds of billions of test miles might have to be driven to properly gauge their safety. While many players are meeting this challenge head-on, a number of other startups are also developing autonomous tech for more focused applications.

Maybe it's just FOMO, but it seems like every internet company wants to be in the car business these days, and Japan's DeNA is no exception. The app maker's automotive wing had a special event in Tokyo today (via Reuters) to reveal its first self-driving vehicle, a 12-person bus which will begin operating in Japan's Chiba prefecture at a shopping center next month. DeNA is probably a familiar name for TechCrunch readers, but the company's highlight moment to date might be its selection as Nintendo's partner in bringing its iconic gaming characters and brands to mobile devices. DeNA has had an automotive business for a while now, though, and now it's launching its first production vehicle in partnership with French driverless tech company EasyMile, which makes the EZ10 Robot Shuttle currently being trialled in a number of global projects. The EasyMile EZ10 can hit a max of 40km or around 25 miles per hour, and employs a variety of sensors, cameras, GP and other systems in order to operate. It's not a full-featured city dweller, though; EasyMile's vehicles are designed specifically for use in private environments, where they don't have to contend with the added complexity of human traffic.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) -- Already home to the world's biggest skyscraper, Dubai has another tall order to fill: By 2030, its leader wants 25 percent of all trips on its roads to be done by driverless vehicles. Monday's announcement by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum came without warning and with few details, as is sometimes the case with the many aspirations of the leadership of the United Arab Emirates. In this car-crazed city-state of over 1.5 million registered vehicles, it's not unusual to see Ferraris idling alongside Lamborghinis at traffic lights. And Dubai already is home to a driverless Metro rail system, which carried 178 million riders in 2015. Smart-car technology is being used in some of the world's luxury vehicles, and it is advancing rapidly enough for the plan to become a reality -- or a nightmare for the thousands of taxi drivers who now plying the streets among the sleek skyscrapers in the UAE's commercial capital.