EVwire brief: Verne has now officially opened its robotaxi fleet to the public in Zagreb, Croatia. For the users who have been accepted from the waitlist and can now download the Verne app, at least 10 robotaxis are ready to serve across key districts of the Croatian capital, with plans to expand coverage across the city.
This screenshot, on the Verne website, gives an idea what the system actually looks like:
The rides will be provided in the Pony.ai-powered Arcfox Alpha T5 electric robotaxis, based on the recent Verne & Pony.ai & Uber partnership. The bespoke two-seater Verne robotaxis are still the end goal, we’ve been told.
Price: 1.99€ per ride, fixed, for the current promotional period.”
Two passengers allowed only for now, no pets.
Service operates between 07:00 and 21:00
The service will soon also be available through the Uber app
photo: Verne
For the first time in Europe there is a real commercial robotaxi service. People can use it and take real autonomous rides.
This is what the Verne app looks like up close:
We also recently got a glimpse of the fleet itself:
source: Verne
For the real geeks like us: Here’s the first-ever Verne paid ride with the CEO and a deep dive on how the service works:
Verne also shared the first-ever commercial robotaxi ride in Europe in a 20-minute video. The ride is taken on the 30th of March by the co-founder & CEO, Marko Pejković, in the Arcfox Alpha T5 robotaxi from their fresh partnership with Pony AI.
Here’s the video, and read further below for everything we noticed:
What we noticed from the video:
Marko orders the vehicle on his phone using the bespoke Verne app, gets matched with “V45” that arrives in 2 minutes (no doubt placed close for the demo).
An interesting caption while waiting for the ride reads “Verne has more eyes than most drivers”
Pony AI’s Arcfox Alpha T5 robotaxi arrives, parks on the curb (supervisor in the driver’s seat). The vehicle sticker reads “V45” on the side, looks like they might use vehicle identification markers similarly for real ride service.
The doors will be locked when it arrives, which you can then unlock from the app:
We can also see there’s a notification from the app about the vehicle arriving
There’s also an interesting addition that comes from the vehicle’s outbound speakers. In Croatian, it says:
“[inaudible, likely about waiting a customer]”
“When they arrive, we leave immediately.”
“If this is your vehicle, unlock it with the VERNE app”
Inside the vehicle, the rear screen shows Verne-branded info, welcoming to the vehicle, a way to choose between Hrvatski (Croatian) and English, and a button to call support. A Verne cat is asking to ‘please start the ride as soon as possible’.
While riding, there’s an interactive screen showing the visualization of what the vehicle sees, rendering nearby vehicles and environment. An audio notification says to fasten the seatbelts and that you can contact Verne by clicking support.
You can also adjust the AC from the rear screen:
There will be a music choice option added later, too.
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The vehicle’s infotainment sceen in the front shows the navigation & other info, too:
There’s also the distance left until the destination shown on the screen, and another button on the bottom row that enables asking the vehicle to pull over.
Marko explains that the vehicle isn’t connected to Google per se, it can drive on its own, and can drive without a connection to the internet. The sensor suite includes LiDAR, radar, cameras, and the service also uses HD maps.
When the AV operators are removed (shoutout to Dario on the video), the vehicles are able to call upon the remote operator when not sure what to do, and the remote operator can toggle the correct action for the vehicle (eg, “yes, you can pass”).
Note from EVwire side: this seems like standard operations for most providers, for example, Waymo says this is how it works for their service with no remote operators taking over the vehicle, but just telling it the right action, whereas on the Tesla side, they’ve confirmed they are also able to overtake the vehicle and teleoperate it at low speeds.
Marko also confirms that the remote operator can not take over remotely.
You can see the sensor suite on top of the vehicle says “ROBO TAXI”, and below it says “hvala na strpljenju”, which means “thank you for your patience.”
Throughout the video, the vehicle operated without any problems in the Zagreb traffic, abiding by traffic lights, leaving some space for a cyclist by default in an intersection.
There was one place where Dario (the safety operator) said “Reported” and they explained that in the case, the vehicle slowed down to 40 km/h although it should’ve only slowed down to 70 km/h. Marko acknowledged that “here you can see, things like this that we have to fix. […] things like this take a very long time to fix.”
The place where the robotaxi should’ve slowed to 70, not to 40
They also touch a bit on the bespoke Verne robotaxi topic:
Basis is safety, of course. If it’s safe enough to make you forget you’re in an autonomous car, then that’s it. Then after that, you can just do upgrades on it, then you can build the car we presented, two-seater, without steering wheel, without everything, a more beautiful interior, to have a bigger screen.
But the bottom line is that it gets you from point A to point B safe, but that you feel safe too. Not only to be safe, but feel safe.
Marko mentioned that “I ride like this every day now, it’s normal for me now”, which seems to hint that they have been using this privately for a while now — much like other robotaxi services open for employees first, before the public.
He was also expressing how proud he is of this first-ever commercial robotaxi ride in Europe happening in Zagreb, Croatia, which isn’t by default the center of innovation in the world today. Here’s the receipt they’ve shared of the ride (with the ride price obviously set artificially low):
Source: Marko Pejković, CEO and co-founder of Verne
At the moment of this launch, the company was 6 years, 6 months and 5 days old.
They say that there is still “Lots to improve. A lot. But in the case of 4-5 months, when we started testing here in Zagreb, big difference.”
Marko also touched on the Pony AI partnership, saying “they have a good system. And what’s even better, they are good partners,” and explaining how they had to rework some of the systems to adapt to Europe specifically, e.g the vehicles not being allowed to turn right on red (unlike in China and the US).
One of the things they mention in this (surprisingly transparent) video is that, for example, you cannot open the door on the left of the robotaxi yet (for safety reasons by default) — “I don’t think it’s fixed yet, so you’ll have to come out from the other side”.
Now that Verne has completed this first step of the service, they can start adding layers on top of it, like specific partnerships with hotels, upgraded vehicles (like removing the front passenger seat for more space & additional screen) and other ideas mentioned in the video.
A neat little addition is that when finishing the ride, the vehicle shows the Right Camera view to give an extra layer of safety when going out of the car:
… and that’s it for the very first commercial ride of robotaxi in Europe. Now, just 9 days later, we’re seeing Verne launch the robotaxi rides to the public.
Our speculation: That’s also when we expect Uber to be looped in, and likely about to see an Uber investment in Verne announced (no details other than ‘intention’ mentioned in their partnership PR, but it’s likely tied to operational milestones like this).
If you want to dig deeper into the partnership, we wrote about it here: partnership of Uber & Verne & PonyAI.
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