“Nancy is at the forefront of global innovation: we are going to be the first metropolis in the world to make Urbanloop a mode of transport for the daily life of the inhabitants” declared the city councilor PS during the presentation of the new Urbanloop capsule on Place Stanislas.
The new design of this capsule, unveiled to the applause of the public for the first time on Friday, had been submitted to the vote of the people of Nancy.
This first line of self-service self-driving vehicles on rails will link the town of Maxéville in the north of Nancy to the new courthouse which will be set up on the former industrial site of Alstom to the east of the city, on the banks of the Meurthe. It will be “interconnected” with the public transport network, said Mr. Klein.
Its development will cost “between 10 and 20 million euros” to the metropolis of Nancy, according to Christophe Choserot, vice-president of the metropolis in charge of research and innovation and mayor of Maxéville, who welcomes a “very competitive project “.
Developed from 2017, Urbanloop mobilized nearly 200 students from the 11 engineering schools of the University of Lorraine. The project now has a dozen employees and plans to recruit seven computer engineers in September, explains its president, Jean-Philippe Mangeot.
Last year, the project set the world record for energy savings for an autonomous vehicle on rails: on a track laid out in Tomblaine (Meurthe-et-Moselle) the capsule completed two laps, i.e. one kilometer, for a derisory energy consumption of 0.05 kWh, or 0.47 euro cents per kilometer, at a speed of 52 km/h.
And before Nancy, Urbanloop will also be present during the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, on a 2 km loop in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, “a demonstration to prove that we can do it”, underlines Mr. Mangeot.
