San Jose, CA is about to become home to a new self-driving taxi service, from Mercedes-Benz and Bosch, two of Germany’s biggest companies.
Autonomous S-Class vehicles will taxi passengers from West San Jose, downtown and back.
The taxi’s will not be able to take dynamic routes, but will be programmed with determined routes between these two destinations.
“The self-driving cars will feature safety drivers in the front seats to monitor the driving. A select group of passengers will receive access to an app through which they can book rides.” said spokespersons on behalf of the companies.
Daimler, the parent company to Mercedes-Benz has been working on self-driving cars for a while now, however none have resembled taxi’s , previously trucks and futuristic concept cars have been the norm.
It was actually last year when the announcement was first made by the two German titans of industry, meaning that this service has come into fruition a lot faster than thought by some.
However, Mercedes-Benz and Bosch were not the first to offer autonomous taxi services, Waymo has been ferrying persons around Phoenix, Lyft has been doing the same in Vegas and Voyage around the Florida retirement communities.
Mercedes-Benz is one of 65 licensed companies to test self driving cars in California on public roads.
