Turkish bus manufacturer TEMSA is planning to put an autonomous electric bus into serial production in 2022.
A driverless concept vehicle ' the autonomous version of the nine-metre long MD9 electriCITY ' was unveiled at the Nvidia Europe GTC in Munich.
The company, which exports almost 15,000 vehicles a year to more than 70 countries, already has the MD9 electriCITY in serial production without its autonomous features and is preparing a second electric bus ' the 12m Avenue Electron ' for serial production.
TEMSA has ploughed considerable resources into autonomous vehicle technology at its Adana plant in southern Turkey for the past two years. The concept version of the electric and autonomous vehicle was developed with Galatasaray University and Infotech company and supported by the Scientific and Research Council of Turkey (TÃœBÄ°TAK).
TEMSA's chief executive officer Mr Hasan Yıldırım said that competition in the automotive industry was essentially about technology, and said: 'The rapid developments in technology are actually redesigning the economic trends in the world. Chief among them are smart transport and smart cities. And the most important part of the smart city vision is electric and autonomous vehicles'
'Annually, we allocate about 5% of our consolidated turnover to R&D efforts with a view to becoming a global brand in our industry'
The autonomous vehicle is equipped with three LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging) radars and cameras to detect objects nearby. It also has an infrared stereo camera to detect other vehicles and people and two further cameras on top of the vehicle confirm the presence of objects in the area. It then calculates the distance between them and the bus.
