Auro Receives California Autonomous Vehicle Operations Testing License

Ridecell’s self-driving vehicle division, Auro, will soon begin testing L4 autonomous vehicles on California’s public roads.
The company was recently granted a California Autonomous Vehicle Operations Testing License and will initially target low speed urban use cases that are focused on solving last mile transportation, according to a news release.
“Receiving a California autonomous testing permit signals an important expansion of our new mobility product offering,” Ridecell CEO Aarjav Trivedi said, according to the release. “Ridecell’s successful ridesharing and carsharing fleet management platform will now expand as our Auro division begins operations testing of self-driving passenger cars and minivans on public streets in cities across California.”
The use cases are designed to improve carsharing operations and include late night carshare fleet rebalancing to high demand urban areas, as well as fleet movement for parking, cleaning and maintenance.
The company’s autonomous vehicle technology features 3-D LiDARs, cameras, navigation sensors and high accuracy 3-D mapping with proprietary software algorithms. It is hardware and vehicle agnostic.
Trials will begin on Ford Fusion vehicle platforms equipped with Auro’s Autonomous Driving System.
“This next step in our corporate development allows Ridecell to serve an even broader segment of the new mobility industry,” Auro Director of Business Development Nalin Gupta said. “Today our broad product offering includes self-driving vehicle technologies and comprehensive cloud-based fleet operations management. Ridecell has become a single source for all the required components that enable our customers to offer either driver-operated or autonomous on-demand vehicle services to their users, all using a single user app and a single cloud-based fleet management platform.”