After years of hype and setbacks, autonomous vehicles (AVs) may finally be on the verge of entering everyday urban life in Europe—not as personal pods but as part of public transportation systems. They may soon become just another way to get to work, meet friends, or run errands in the city.
That’s the vision behind Moia, a ride-pooling service owned by Volkswagen. Since 2019, Moia (named after the Sanskrit word for “magic”) has operated a fleet of several hundred battery electric shuttles in the German cities of Hamburg and Hanover. Now, Moia is preparing to take the next step: launching an autonomous service in Hamburg starting in 2027. In pursuit of its longer-term goals, Moia is working with partners to create a multicity accessible-mobility fleet comprising newly developed Level-4 autonomous ID. Buzz AD vehicles.
At a recent conference just outside Munich, Moia CEO Sascha Meyer discussed his vision for the autonomous future with McKinsey Partner Kersten Heineke. “There is a need,” he says, “for more comfortable, more flexible solutions. With autonomous vehicles, we will be able to bridge the gap between large-scale transport systems and the individual-owned car.”
The following conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Collaborating on the ID. Buzz AD
Kersten Heineke: Tell us about how one of these autonomous vehicles gets built. What does Moia do? What does Volkswagen do? Who are your other partners, and what do they do?
Sascha Meyer: The car is built in Germany by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, so we collaborate closely in engineering. There’s a company called ADMT, more or less our sister company, which integrates the virtual driver into the car and builds the systems—including software and hardware components—necessary for autonomous driving. We also collaborate with Mobileye from Israel; we use its self-driving stack for sensing and for the drive function.
Moia then builds software for passenger management, ensuring passengers are safe on board and orchestrating the fleets in the cities where the cars will drive. We make sure that if there’s any problem, we’re able to respond. We also offer a white-labeling solution to help providers create mobility services.
Kersten Heineke: The ecosystem that the car operates in seems critically important to making the vehicle work, which is probably at least as important as the vehicle itself.
Sascha Meyer: Absolutely. Building a self-driving vehicle is a very, very complicated task. And on top of that, if you want to bring those vehicles into cities, you need to be able to control the fleets. That means knowing where those vehicles can and should drive. It means being able to respond to road blockages and increases in demand. We’ve built the fleet control systems that are necessary to pick up passengers and carry them safely to their destinations.
On convincing the skeptics and overcoming challenges
Kersten Heineke: What would you say to someone who says, “I’m never getting in an AV”?
Sascha Meyer: I’d say, “Wait for it.” A lot of people said the same thing when, for example, mobile phones first came out. They said, “I have a phone at home; why do I need a mobile phone?” Same thing when smartphones became a thing: “Why would I need to send pictures in a message?” Now, of course, smartphones are ubiquitous.
I think we’ll see the same adoption with AVs. Once people get on board, they realize it works and it’s safe. At first, it’s very exciting. But after people have been on board for ten minutes, they pick up their phones, check their emails, and start thinking this is normal.
We think people will start seeing the advantages; they’ll see the benefits of a reliable, comfortable transport option, and that will create customer acceptance.
Kersten Heineke: What’s the hardest problem Moia has solved so far? And what’s the hardest problem you still need to solve?
Sascha Meyer: When it comes to the pure transport mode, the hardest problem we’ve solved is convincing passengers that sharing is a good thing. People who are accustomed to using taxis were a bit confused at first when other people started getting in the car with them. But with customer communication and education, we convinced them that shared mobility is just another option in their mix of transport solutions. It’s not replacing anything; it’s an addition. That’s the challenge I anticipate with AVs as well. We need to help people answer questions like, “How should I use AVs? What are they intended for?” It’s about creating awareness that these vehicles are not there to become the dominant mode of transportation; they are there to support you in your daily life.
I think a lot of people in the industry forget about consumers. OEMs don’t deal directly with the consumer, and many tech companies are focused on building the best tech possible. Sometimes the consumer is an afterthought. But the cities we operate in are full of people, and those people have emotions, and we need to take them along for the ride. That’s why I emphasize this so much: to make sure we in the industry understand that it’s not only about the tech but also about who it’s good for.
AI and AVs
Kersten Heineke: What cutting-edge technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on AVs in the next couple of years?
Sascha Meyer: AI has been integral to the success of AVs so far, and AI will take us one step further. Today, it’s a rule-based system, where the car is given a set of rules and then decides what it should and shouldn’t do based on what it perceives. End-to-end AI will help us create more capable systems that can deal with edge cases that might be a struggle for cars operating under today’s rule-based systems.
We also use AI to help us understand how passengers are doing in the car. In the future, AI should help us provide a better experience for people with disabilities, for example. We think it’s possible to be a concierge service—like a private chauffeur—but at the price of a bus ride.
The private-car paradigm
Kersten Heineke: What will happen to private cars when AVs hit the road?
Sascha Meyer: Private cars will still have their place in the future. They offer great mobility for families in a city or anyone who wants to travel to rural areas. But at the same time, with AVs and public transport, we can create systems in areas of high traffic that can decrease congestion. It’s really about having flexible, comfortable, broad offerings for customers.
Kersten Heineke: Will there be a use case for a privately owned AV?
Sascha Meyer: I expect we’ll see private AVs in the decades to come, but for now, centrally operated fleets are the best way to bring AVs safely into operation. You need professionals to keep the car clean and the sensors calibrated to run a safe driving system. There still needs to be a huge amount of operational control in the background and support for the vehicles in situations where the system is uncertain of the right thing to do. In the five- to ten-year timeline, I don’t think that the systems will have evolved to the point where customers will be able to take over service and management.
Kersten Heineke: What would you say to one of your kids if they said, “I want to own an AV”?
Sascha Meyer: I think my response would be, “Why would you? Why would you want to spend money on something you can use as a service?” I think the curiosity of driving a car and all the emotions associated with driving will become less and less important for future generations. We already see that some people care more about what’s on the screen than what’s in the engine. I think the next step will be that they care less about driving the car and less about the screen experience. They will just want to get from A to B conveniently. And if we can offer autonomous mobility at a price point of an individual car today, I think that will be a game changer. A lot of people will struggle to find a good reason to own a car. And I hope that includes my kids.
Predictions for the next five years
Kersten Heineke: In five years’ time, how much of the mobility journey will be autonomous? What will people use these vehicles for in their day-to-day lives?
Sascha Meyer: In five years, we will see the beginning of the transformation. By then, Moia and other companies will have introduced AVs in selected cities. In the beginning, as we’ve seen with Moia, they will be more like an addition that you use out of curiosity. And then, when people see that we provide a reliable service, they will start using AVs for some appointments or other travel needs. Then, adoption will start to increase. Slow and steady adoption is great for us; it’s better than dropping huge numbers of vehicles in cities and scaring everyone off.
Kersten Heineke: In which cities will AVs gain traction? Are they in Europe, the US, everywhere? Are they big cities, small cities?
Sascha Meyer: In five to seven years, we think AVs will not only be in the US and China but also in Europe. It’s more complex in Europe because there are lots of regulatory requirements for safety, such as redundant brakes and redundant energy supply in the system. I think this was the right thing to do because now we have absolute certainty in the investments we make. We know our vehicle is built to pass the high regulatory bar. Once we pass this bar, we know we are ready from an operational and commercial standpoint. I think this will create an environment where lots of players will want to come to Europe.
No one silver bullet will dominate all transport within cities. It will be a combination of various options. For peak times, like during commuting hours, we need high-speed rail and very capable bus systems. At the same time, we need the flexibility of shared AVs in cities where demand is increasing. We will need to use our existing infrastructure wisely and help our cities’ street networks grow as needed.
The people who build driverless cars
Kersten Heineke: Let’s talk about talent. I’m sure you face intense competition for talent. What types of roles are hardest to fill?
Sascha Meyer: It’s all about data. We need data engineers, algorithm engineers, and machine learning engineers who can make sense of the data. But equally, we need to tackle complex engineering challenges in the vehicle, so we need people who know how to build safe and reliable cars. Finally, we need great software engineers who take it to the next level in integration and ensure that these complex systems work brilliantly together to create an ecosystem within the vehicle, so that we can make AVs that are ready to be shipped.
Kersten Heineke: If I’m a young person who wants to work in the AV industry in ten years, what would you tell me? What should I study?
Sascha Meyer: Based on what’s happening at the moment, AI is key. Today, AI is vastly dominated by generative models, but there’s more to it. Having the fundamentals of AI and the awareness of how to create the complex systems that bring AI into reality will be a key competency for the years to come.
