In November 2018, Bosch and Daimler sat down and worked together a program to provide an automated on-demand ride-hailing service inSan José, America. Located on the southern shore of San Francisco Bay in Silicon Valley, and with more than one million inhabitants, San José is the third biggest city in California. It is planned to be the pilot city for trials, targeted to begin during the second half of 2019, of the highly and fully automated driving (SAE Level 4/5) on-demand ride-hailing service recently announced by Bosch and Daimler.
The two companies’ associates are jointly developing the concepts and algorithms for the highly and fully automated drive system. Daimler’s task is to bring the drive system into the car. The company is providing the necessary development vehicles, test facilities, and vehicles for the test fleet. Bosch is responsible for the components specified during the development work, such as sensors, actuators, and control units. For test purposes, Bosch and Daimler use their laboratories and test rigs, plus their respective test sites in Germany. Since obtaining its Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles in 2014, Mercedes-Benz has been testing automated vehicles in the Sunnyvale/California region. And since 2016, it has had similar approval for the greater Stuttgart area in Germany. In early 2013, Bosch was the world’s first automotive supplier to test automated driving (SAE level 3) on public roads in Germany and the United States.
