Groupe Renault has started a public trial of its on-demand car service in Paris using autonomous, electric and shared Zoe Cab vehicles.

The Paris-Saclay Automous Lab project began yesterday at the Paris-Saclay urban campus and will continue until November 8.

It will see a panel of around 100 people use the car service in the daytime and they will be asked to share their thoughts about the overall service, mobile booking app, vehicle comfort levels, and on-board services.

The smartphone app allows users to hail a car when they need it, or book it in advance.

Users indicate their position, destination and how many passengers they are booking for. The Zoe Cab will stop en route – if need be – to pick up another passenger for either the remainder of the trip or part thereof.

Depending on where the user is on campus when they place their booking, the app will direct them to the nearest meeting point and provide an estimated time of arrival for the vehicle.

The service is designed to provide considerable coverage of the campus with 12 pick-up/drop-off points that were chosen for their proximity to the most frequented areas and because they won’t disrupt traffic.

Once the passenger is in the car, they can follow their trip via the app and know their ETA at the drop-off point.

The objective of this experiment is to test the technical aspects of this on-demand mobility service, and to evaluate its acceptability and adoption by end-users for their daily journeys.

Groupe Renault says this experiment and the feedback from the panel will enable it to identify any necessary adaptations to be made to the service, the mobile application, and the vehicles, to offer the best on-demand, electric, autonomous and shared mobility service in the future.

The panel is representative of the general campus population and is made up of university students, teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and admin staff.

More articles on: