This one took me by surprise. And, reading about it, it seems like another VW mistake. The details are in this article . It is an autonomous van created by VW’s MOIA division.
First, it has room for four passengers. A VW van with room for four passengers? They brag that it has a lot of legroom. And, I guess, hiproom. Part of the problem is that the passenger seat has been replaced by luggage storage. And, for no apparent reason, it has a driver’s seat. Not making a lot of sense so far.
From the article
The van features a full 360-degree view enabled by 27 sensors: 13 cameras, nine LiDAR units, and \give radar sensors. Its AI meets the requirements for Level 4 autonomy, meaning it can handle all driving without human intervention in specific scenarios, which is on par with Waymo’s fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in the US.
Assuming the \give is a typo meaning five, that’s a lot of expensive hardware. Nine LIDAR units is nine more that Tesla has. And “without human intervention in specific scenarios” means it is geo-fenced unlike the Tesla intelligent approach.
Unlike Waymo, at least they are building their own car but unless Tesla’s approach doesn’t work, this seems like another bad, as well as expensive, idea.