For autonomous vehicles to fulfill their promise of freeing humans from the task of driving, they need real infrastructure. Palo Alto-based Autolane is proposing to design, build, and deploy it, and has secured over $7 million in funding to produce the first phase. The company wants to enable autonomous vehicles for pickups, deliveries, rideshare, and more.
We might have been promised self-driving cars within two years by Elon Musk’s Tesla back in the early 2010s, but in the mid-2020s, it’s becoming more of a reality. Robotaxis are finally rolling out across the US and some select international cities, and there’s a real push to make this a viable business model with safe, functional vehicles. It’s still missing a lot of needed infrastructure, though, which is where Autolane might come in.
“I believe we are one of the first, let’s say, ‘application layer’ companies in autonomy,” Autolane co-founder and CEO Ben Seidl said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We aren’t the fundamental models. We’re not building the cars. We’re not doing anything like that. We are simply saying, as this industry balloons rapidly and has exponential growth—as is already occurring this year and will occur for the next 10 years straight—someone is going to have to sit in the middle and orchestrate, coordinate, and kind of evaluate what’s going on.”
The kinds of things it wants to develop include universal signage, similar to the current Lyft and Uber signs you can find at airports and hotels. It wants to strike deals with transportation and hospitality organizations to allow autonomous vehicles and robotaxis to pick up and drop off at designated locations, so they aren’t mixed up with human-driven taxis or other vehicles. This would allow for safe, easy pick-ups and drop-offs, letting someone call for a taxi if needed or have one automatically pick up their shopping and drop it off at their apartment.
But it needs to know where at the store to pick up from, and where at the apartment building to meet you. That’s what Autolane is building.
With backing from VC firms like Draper Associates and Hyperplane, Autolane has secured $7.4 million in funding to take its ideas forward. Autolane will also develop software for navigating unique situations, such as private car parks and drive-thru lanes. At the very least, it can design a specific layout for roads and private highways that would allow companies to quickly adapt to automated vehicles.