Uber Defeated By Tiny Startup Company, First Self-Driving Cab Service Tested In Singapore

Uber recently set out to become the first to launch fully autonomous cab services, but it seems a tiny startup that launched the first ever set of self-driving taxis in Singapore managed to beat it to the punch. The Cambridge startup called “nuTonomy Inc.” recently started its first real-world road test, making it to the first to actually do so in the world.

Speaking to the Boston Globe, Karl Iagnemma, the co-founder and CEO of “nuTonomy” states that this is the first ever event of fully autonomous vehicles hitting the streets of a major metropolis to ferry around actual passengers. The passengers themselves are volunteers who signed up for the test, however, so it isn’t as if the startup just went ahead and started picking random people up.

Iagnemma is a researcher at MIT and worked closely with authorities in Singapore to bring this test to life. The cars themselves are Renault and Mitsubishi models, and an engineer is behind the wheel at all times throughout the test to step in if things go wrong. So far, it seems the experiment is well-received.

“People are a little bit nervous when they get into the car, but that very quickly changes,” Iagnemma said. “You would be surprised at how quickly people get out their phone and act like they’re in any other form of transportation.”

As Tech Crunch noted, Uber made a big deal about being the very first to introduce self-driving cabs in the streets, which it plans to roll out in Pennsylvania in a few weeks. Unfortunately for them, the much smaller and less well-known startup was ahead of them by a matter of days. Granted, the test was launched in Singapore, but it is still a significant milestone for what is considered the future of public transportation.