The FABULOS consortium has finalised the evaluation of the tenders and has awarded five consortia with contracts. The aim of these contracts is to facilitate procurement of R&D work to develop systems capable of operating fleets of automated minibuses. As a first step towards this goal, each consortium will conduct a feasibility study of proposed solutions and technologies.
After the closing of the FABULOS request for tenders on 31 October 2018, the tenders were assessed by the Technical Evaluation Committee. In addition to commercial feasibility and project management, nine functional criteria and three non-functional criteria were used. The functional criteria range from fleet management and remote operation and all the way to requirements for vehicle capabilities in mixed traffic. Societal and legal aspects form elements of the non-functional criteria. The fleet is expected to drive in mixed traffic, at urban speeds, in nearly in all weather conditions and without a conductor on board.
“We were positively surprised by the high quality of tenders received and were pleased to discover so many exceptional solutions to the FABULOS challenge. It will be very exciting to see these proposed solutions become a reality by the end of 2020,” summarises Technical Chair of the Evaluation Committee Oscar Nissin, from Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.
16 companies from six European countries
Five European consortia have succeeded in the first stage of the competition. In total, 16 companies from six European countries formed consortia as follows:
- The FVF Consortium consisting of three Finnish partners: Fortum Power and Heat Oy, Fleetonomy.ai Oy and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.
- The Kompai-Actia Consortium consisting of two French companies: Kompaï Robotics and Actia Automobile.
- The Mobile Civitatem Consortium consisting of four partners from Estonia: Modern Mobility Oü, Tallinn University of Technology, Silberauto Eesti AS and Ecofleet Eesti Oü. The fifth member of the consortium is the Danish company Autonomous Mobility A/S.
- The Saga Consortium consisting of four Norwegian partners: Halogen AS, Forus PRT AS, Spare Labs Inc. and Ramboll Management Consulting AS.
- The Sensible 4 – Shotl Consortium consisting of two partners: Sensible 4 from Finland and Shotl from Spain.
The total FABULOS procurement budget is around 5,500,000 euros (incl. VAT). The maximum budget for individual suppliers involved in all three phases is over 1,000,000 euros (excluding VAT).
Next step – feasibility study
On 1 January 2019, the first phase of the FABULOS pre-commercial procurement – a feasibility study of the proposed solutions and technologies – is due to start. The aim is to verify the technical, economical and organisational feasibility of each consortium’s offer. The expected output is a report describing the results of the feasibility study and the conclusions for the start of the prototype development.
The most promising concepts will be developed into well-defined prototypes and lab-tested during the autumn of 2019 in the second phase of the pre-commercial procurement. The third phase aims to verify and compare the first end-products in real-life conditions. It is expected that three selected prototypes will be tested as small fleets of automated buses in Estonia, Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and Portugal from March 2020 onwards.