20 July 2016
Vehicles will operate individually or will be linked together in a bus-like form.

Careem, the Dubai-based ride sharing app, has signed an agreement to bring the first ever battery-powered, self-driving electric pods to the Middle East, it said in a press release on Tuesday.

The new mass transportation system will be able to pick passengers up on demand and the pods will operate individually or will be linked together in a bus-like form.

The vehicles will be developed as part of a partnership between Careem and American firm Next Future Transportation, Inc. "We have invented the world's finest autonomous mass transit solution, and, as we look to operationalise, we need a partner that will provide operational depth and scale," Emmanuele Spera, founder and CEO of Next Future Transportation, Inc, said in a press statement.

The partnership comes a few months after the government announced the launch of the Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy (DATS). The initiative aims to have 25 percent of all transportation in Dubai operating using smart and driverless systems by 2030.

The strategy aims to cut Dubai's yearly transportation costs by 44 percent and reduce environmental pollution by as much as 12 percent. The government has also launched the Dubai World Challenge for self-driving transport, which will be the largest international tender for companies and research development centres to develop new forms of technology for the city's roads.

Self-driving car projects have become recently and luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Infiniti and Tesla have all released futuristic models that no longer need a human driver at the wheel. In partnership with Lexus, Google is also currently testing and creating new prototypes for fully self-driving cars.

It is the latest futuristic transport model announced to be announced in the United Arab Emirates in recent weeks. Last month, Miral, the developer behind Abu Dhabi's Yas Island, signed a partnership agreement with Californian firm SkyTran to develop the Middle East's first personal rapid transit system. Together, the firms will develop computer-controlled, two-person "jet-like" vehicles, or pods, which will travel above the traffic along magnetic elevated strips.

© Zawya 2016