6 Jul 17
News

Continental invests in EasyMile

Tech company Continental is to acquire a minority stake in EasyMile SAS, a French autonomous driving company developing driverless electric shuttles. These shuttles will play a key role in the addressing the 'first/last-mile' challenge in the future of mobility.

In addition to Continental’s equity investment in EasyMile, the companies plan to cooperate closely in the fields of environmental sensors, braking systems and driving safety technologies. 

This opens the door for Continental to numerous possible applications within EasyMile shuttles worldwide, while incorporating tried and tested large-scale production techniques from the automotive field. The first example is that the EasyMile EZ10 fleet will be running on Continental EcoContact tires with optimized tread geometry, ensuring low rolling resistance and rolling noise.

The EZ10 shuttle from EasyMile is a twelve-person autonomous shuttle first released in 2014, which has been deployed in more than 50 cities across 17 countries in Asia-Pacific, North America, the Middle East and Europe. Continental began testing automated systems on public roads in 2012 in Nevada, USA. The technology company now has a globally operating fleet of development vehicles in Germany, the USA, Japan and China.

Image: EasyMile

Authored by: Frank Jacobs