Self-driving buses to arrive in France in next six months
Final testing of the vehicles is currently underway
Passengers step onto a self-driving bus during testing in Châteauroux.
keolis.com
The first self-driving buses to run in France are to begin services this coming September, once the current final tests are successfully finished.
The driverless buses will begin serving a 2.5km route in central Châteauroux in Indre (Centre-Val de Loire) from September 2026. They can carry eight passengers.
Described as ‘automatic vehicles (véhicules automatisés)’, the buses will be run by transport operator Kéolis, and are manufactured by Renault and Chinese company WeRide. Each bus costs between €250,000 and €300,000.
“This is the first time a regular autonomous passenger transport service will be launched in France,” says Alexandre Flon, regional director for Centre-Val-de-Loire at Kéolis, quoted in Capital.
The buses will have three key aims, he said:
To tackle the skills shortage, as “fewer and fewer people are choosing to become bus drivers”
To enable a more extensive, flexible service in “sparsely populated suburban areas”
To achieve economies of scale, as “a single supervisor will coordinate several shuttles”.
‘Learning in real-world conditions’
The buses are currently in the final testing stages at the former air base 703 in Châteauroux-Déols, which Kéolis has dubbed the site d’essais de la mobilité autonome (SEMA, ‘testing site of autonomous transport’).
The site has been designed to be as close to a normal road as possible, to test the buses in “real-world traffic conditions”, said Mr Flon. The circuit at the former airbase includes traffic lights, stop signs, junctions, roundabouts, and speed bumps.
The buses are also “learning” to overtake and brake in an emergency. Their operation is still being supervised by a technician from an on-site control centre, but they are otherwise completely driverless.
If the buses are deemed a success on the first route in Châteauroux, a second route will be rolled out shortly after, said Emeric Claveau, project manager at Kéolis.
“If the first route proves successful, a second line of autonomous buses is already planned for 2028,” he said. “The city of Orléans is also interested. And other local authorities have approached us about conducting trials.”
Autonomous buses and cars are already relatively common in some parts of China (with the WeRide and Baidu shuttles), and the US (including Waymo Google shuttles and Zoox ‘robotaxis’).
France and driverless vehicles
And while France does not yet have driverless buses on its roads, it is no stranger to considering their introduction, or ways to ensure their safety.
In 2019, Anne-Marie Idrac, a former transport minister and head of French railway SNCF, told The Connexion that the government had decided that “autonomous vehicles will form a key part of its policy to boost industries of the future”.
She said: “Parliament has voted through the necessary laws to allow (autonomous vehicles) on the roads in real conditions from 2020 to 2022, as soon as the technologies reach high enough standards to allow it. The first will undoubtedly be shared or collective vehicles.”
In 2021, France became the first country in the EU to adapt the rules of its ‘highway code’ to include self-driving vehicles.
The rules currently specify a legal framework for using self-drive cars in France, including:
Guidance on drivers’ legal responsibilities when handing over control to autonomous cars
The emergency functions that the vehicles are allowed to perform automatically
How much attention drivers should continue to pay to their surroundings while their vehicle is operating independently.
