Norway debuts its first bus without supervision on board
Mobility is undergoing a brutal transformation and it is not just due to electrification: total automation is just around the corner. We have seen it in tests, but Norway has just taken a step forward: It is the first time in its history and a pioneering case in Europe in which a bus goes from pilot tests with a human driver on board to real autonomous commercial operation. In a nutshell: a fully autonomous bus, without a driver just in case The new Norwegian autonomous bus. A few days ago the General Directorate of Highways of Norway gave the green light to the operators Vy and Kolumbus to eliminate that driver in case the flies from the testing area in Stavenger, present since 2022. This authorization allows operating on public transport routes without supervision since it reaches a high autonomy, Level 4 according to the SAE scale. That is, it does not require human intervention: if it detects an error that it cannot resolve, the vehicle looks for a safe place to stop. The vehicle is the Karsan e-ATAK, equipped with ADASTEC autonomous driving software and managed through the xFlow fleet management system, developed by Applied Autonomy. It can travel up to 50 km/h day or night and in any weather condition. It is capable of autonomously managing stops, loading and unloading of passengers, intersections and traffic lights. Why is it important. Although SAE Level 4 autonomous buses can now drive themselves under certain conditions, until now they still required a safety operator on board for legal or technical reasons. And although we have been hearing about completely autonomous vehicles for years, in practice in real environments they are rare and even more so in bus format. Stavenger breaks the pattern in urban public transportation with a system designed for a single remote operator to supervise several vehicles at the same time, which opens the door to scale autonomous transportation in areas where hiring human drivers is not viable. This advance has its relevance in terms of costs, which can translate into being able to operate routes during low demand times or in peripheral areas where there is no rental. On the other hand, automation eliminates human error, responsible for the vast majority of traffic accidents. This system does not get tired and is also optimized to optimize consumption. Context. It all started with a specific problem: Forus is one of the most important industrial areas in Norway (there are 3,000 companies and 40,000 people working there), but public transportation was scarce and insufficient. So in 2018 Kolumbus deployed there its first autonomous vehicle, an EasyMile EZ10 electric minibus as a last mile solution: transported people from the main stop to the offices using laser sensors to map the environment in 3D and connected to a remote control center. It was small, slow and operated in a closed area, but it planted the seed. Since that pilot project, the evolution has been progressive, slowly but surely: in 2022 a full-size bus was already deployed in open traffic and from 2023 opera on a more demanding line that involves lane changes when there is traffic, higher speeds or tunnels. Leaving the Nordic countrythere are tests in Germany or Finland, in American cities such as Detroit and Jacksonville and if we go to Asia, since June 2024 China is already testing the first tests of autonomous driving on public roads and Singapore also has a pilot program. How have they done it. The project is a consortium: Karsan manufactures the bus, ADASTEC provides the autonomous driving software, Applied Autonomy supplies the xFlow control center for remote monitoring and assistance, Vy Buss operates the service, and Kolumbus is the public transport authority. The Rogaland County Council and the Municipality of Stavanger are the owners of the road and approved the route, while the Highway Directorate authorized driving in autonomous mode. The project has been gaining trust step by step. The video of 2018 It already shows the basics of operation: LiDAR sensors to see the environment, high-precision 3D maps to know the exact position, and a remote control center that supervises the operation. The consortium applied this same logic but on a real urban scale. On the other hand, Stavanger also has exclusive bus lanes, which considerably simplifies the operation. Yes, but. The road from Forus to the center of Stavanger has taken eight years. Scaling this to the rest of the world will also be slow. A paper from 2025 published in Future Transportation identifies cybersecurity, sensor technology and shared lane management among the critical barriers. On a global scale, the industry must overcome everything from legislation to high costs to cybersecurity risks and public trust before eventual deployment. On the other hand, the Norwegian project itself, although it has taken a giant step, recognize which is a trickle: it is in a controlled environment, not a generalized deployment. In Xataka | I have boarded the first autonomous bus that operates in Barcelona. I haven’t noticed any difference with a normal one In Xataka | Madrid has big plans for autonomous buses within the city. And it has started in Mercamadrid Cover | kolumbus and Majestic Lukas
