Two American companies have joined forces to develop a new electric vehicle
driverless capable of delivering several tens of kilos of cargo within a wide radius in the city. This vehicle is called the Faction D1 and should allow green deliveries at a lower cost.
The car will not yet go on sale in the United States, many tests are still to be carried out.
A competitor to traditional delivery companies?
Arcimoto is a company specializing in electric vehicles. Its flagship model is the FUV, for Fun Utility Vehicle, a small three-wheeled electric car that can carry two passengers seated in tandem, one behind the other like on a scooter, and driven with handlebars. For its part, Faction is a startup that develops driverless electric vehicle solutions. The two American companies have joined forces to develop the Faction D1, a driverless vehicle specializing in delivery.
If we are sold the term ” driverless is not totally true in reality. No driver on board the vehicle, yes, but a human with remote controls thanks to DriveLink and TeleAssist technologies developed by Faction.
The vehicle is based on Arcimoto’s FUV, which is only available in a few US states. We are therefore told that the three-wheeled car will have substantially the same characteristics and will be able to travel 160 km at a maximum speed of 121 km/h. It will be able to carry up to 227 kg of cargo if the passenger seats are replaced by a cargo storage system. Faction assures that the D1 will be very competitive economically, with a cost per mile of less than 2 dollars.
Cheaper deliveries
In a press release, Mark Frohnmayer, president of Arcimoto, said: We are excited to work with the Faction teams to support driverless development on the Arcimoto platform. With a common mission to deploy a highly efficient electric vehicle at scale, the commercial launch of the D1 driverless vehicle will be a revolution for last mile logistics. In other words, the two companies believe they can align logistics cost management, responsiveness and what it will cost consumers.
Note that this is not the only project of its kind in which Faction is involved. Indeed, we learned last week of its partnership with ElectraMeccanica to develop a delivery vehicle in the same vein as the D1.
Trials for the Faction D1 are scheduled for later this year.
On the same subject :
Uber: autonomous meal delivery will be tested from 2022
Source: Electrek
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