The signed agreement, initiated by Holo, has brought Toyota Motor Europe and the Finnish technology company Sensible 4 into our self-driving partnership with Rüter.

The agreement paves the way for vehicles retrofitted with Sensible 4’s autonomous driving software to be operated by Holo in a new pilot project launching in the spring of 2021. 

With this project came new vehicles. The new vehicle is the Toyota Proace and the project had two of them driving on the route. The vehicles were wrapped with Ruters red color. Holo was in charge of the daily operation of these vehicles and was inside the vehicles as a safety driver to ensure the rides to go as smooth as possible.

Ruter and Holo commenced their first trials of self-driving public transport in Oslo in 2019. Having already established three autonomous shuttle routes in Oslo, the focus is now being shifted to suburban environments outside the city itself. More precisely, in this case, towards the town of Ski in Nordre Follo municipality. 

With these new vehicles, we could implement higher speed which made it easier to blend into mixed traffic, where it was driving. At the same time, it was geared to handle all sorts of weather capabilities, which was quite relevant when driving in Norway. 

The route was placed in mixed traffic for the vehicle to interact with the infrastructure in Ski. The route was a two kilometer loop with eight stops along it.

With this new vehicle running we expected to improve autonomous performance and the ability to drive with higher max speed. It was an opportunity for Holo to test the next generation of autonomous vehicles. 

This project consisted of four partners who each had their own role in the project. Holo was in charge of all project approvals and operating the vehicles when the project was up and running. Toyota Motor Europe was the one supplying the vehicles for the project. Sensible 4 provided the autonomous software and modifications of the vehicle to include a sensor stack. At last, there was Ruter, who is the public transport authority and was as well responsible for communication to the end-user.

All of our employees were very committed to the daily operation of the route and brought their absolute best when we together were working on moving mobility forward for good.

With brand new vehicles comes brand new ways of operating them as well. The first part of this project is, therefore, to train our employees to be the experts on being in the new Sensible 4 system and the Toyota vehicles. 

This service was called 529 and was available for passengers from April 2021 to February 2022

This international partnership marks a new chapter of Ruter’s and Holo’s self-driving vehicle trials that test out autonomous public transportation in Norway. In previous phases of the trials, shuttle buses from the French company NAVYA have been on the routes of Akershusstranda, Ormøya, and Kongens Gate. At the same time, the service and software are undergoing rapid improvements as Holo pushes the development forward. 

With this pilot project, there was an opportunity to show how an autonomous future might look like, with the Toyota vehicle integrated into daily traffic. Our mission is to create a view where autonomous mobility will overtake the role of owned cars and in that way create more smooth mobility for riders.

At the moment, Holo has moved more than 67,000 passengers in our autonomous vehicles on our routes in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estland, and Denmark.