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34 Finance While Shuttle sales have begun to generate income, accounting for more than 90% of the company’s turnover in the current financial year, developing the Cab is expensive. So far, e 30 million in capital has been invested in Navya to develop the Shuttle and the Cab, all from venture capitalists and shareholders, but none from banks. Sapet says that even though the company is no longer a start-up, none of the banks – particularly in France – are ready to finance this kind of venture. French groups Valeo and Keolis, and Qatar-based Group8, acquired stakes in the company in October 2016, joining Gravitation and CapDecisif Management who joined the previous year, and original investor Robolution Capital. Robolution is managed by 360 Capital Partners and retains control of Navya. As well as providing the Lidar and radar sensors for the vehicles, Valeo is Navya’s technology partner, and their collaboration is centred on Navya’s access to Valeo’s technology and materials to integrate into the vehicles and optimise sensor data analysis. Public transport specialist Keolis is described as Navya’s fleet deployment partner, providing the expertise required to manage fleets of driverless vehicles used by local authorities. They have been cooperating on the Shuttle service in Lyon’s Confluence neighbourhood, for example, since September 2016. Since May 2016, the Royal Automobile Club of Australia has been acting as Navya’s regional fleet deployment partner to speed up the deployment of Shuttles in Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. Factory expansion In the facility at Vénissieux and its near- facsimile in Saline, Michigan, in the USA, there is an assembly line of sorts, but the Shuttles now in production are manhandled from station to station, a process that is much easier once they have taken the form of a rolling chassis. Although it is well-lit, clean and well- ordered with free-standing gantry cranes to lift heavy items such as body frames onto chassis, the Vénissieux factory still resembles a large garage, Sapet admits. It is possible to stand on a work platform and see racks of shelving with small parts, body panels, frames, chassis, motors, brake assemblies, electronics and myriad other components and sub- assemblies, as well as Shuttles in various stages of completion, with workers moving around them, and finished vehicles all in one space. Counting the vehicles visible in my photographs, there were 11 apparently complete or nearly complete Shuttles plus a chassis without wheels, a rolling chassis with its motor in place that was in the process of receiving its body frame, one with its frame in place and at least three more with body panels attached. There was also one completed Cab prototype that was clearly serving as a test hack, while another was being assembled in an adjacent space that Navya was preparing to configure for the production of Cabs. Initially, these will be pre-series vehicles, and Sapet stresses that, as with the earlier trials involving the prototypes, he is keen to take advantage of what the company learns from further operations and incorporate any modifications that may be required. “After that we are not sure we will be able to do all the manufacturing for that vehicle. We intend the figures to be very high in the future – not this year perhaps, or in 2019, but by 2020 we will need a large manufacturing capability,” he says. He says the company’s ambition is to create a new system of public mobility that gives all the citizens of big cities access to a range of autonomous vehicles, which in future could include a smaller vehicle with seats for two or three people, and even something much larger such as a bus, most likely built with a partner. All of this, however, will depend on making the most of what might be a narrow window of opportunity in the market. Sapet notes that major car manufacturers are becoming convinced that they should be in the robotic taxi business, pointing to Daimler’s acquisition of Chauffeur Privé, one of Uber’s competitors in France. “So if the car manufacturers buy the operators, our customers will disappear – because all of Chauffeur Privé’s cars will be Mercedes and so on. That is the main issue to face.” April/May 2018 | Unmanned Systems Technology Dossier | Navya Autonom Cab One of the Cab prototypes in Navya’s Vénissieux facility, in company with Shuttles (Courtesy of Navya)