This is ahead of an expected launch of AV shuttle services in Punggol next year

 

[SINGAPORE] The Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore has given its approval to transport operator ComfortDelGro and its autonomous vehicle (AV) partner Pony.ai to begin testing their AV shuttles in residential district Punggol.

 

ComfortDelGro told The Business Times on Wednesday (Dec 10) that the Centre of Testing & Research of Autonomous Vehicles &ndash NTU (Cetran) has also approved all five of the vehicles that will be used in the trial.

 

Established in 2017 by Nanyang Technological University, LTA and JTC &ndash a government agency tasked with developing industrial infrastructure &ndash Cetran supports LTA in developing test requirements and standards for deploying AVs in Singapore. 

 

Cheng Siak Kian, ComfortDelGro&rsquo s group chief executive officer, told BT that completing the Cetran Milestone 1 batch assessment highlights the company&rsquo s &ldquo dedication to innovation, safety and operational excellence&rdquo . 

 

&ldquo This achievement meets the stringent standards for AV systems, enabling us to responsibly introduce intelligent transport systems in Singapore,&rdquo he added.

 

The approval comes after regulators last month gave Grab and WeRide the green light to test their AV shuttles in Punggol as well. 

 

Singapore wants to roll out commercial AV services next year, with the initial phase a shuttle service plying a fixed number of locations within a specified district. Punggol, located in the north-east of the city-state, will be the first residential district to have the AV shuttle service.

 

ComfortDelGro will operate five seven-seater AV shuttles when road trials begin, expected to be in the first quarter of 2026. Its competitor Grab has an AV fleet that consists of 10 five-seaters and one eight-seater Robobus. 

 

The tests in Punggol are key to the commencement of AV operations. They will allow ComfortDelGro and Pony.ai to localise their AV software by gathering data such as road infrastructure, weather patterns, as well as the behaviours of road users and pedestrians. 

Massive amounts of such data are needed for AVs to operate in Singapore, as their artificial intelligence systems rely on this information to make real-time decisions. 

 

In March, ComfortDelGro and Pony.ai began a sandbox programme in Guangzhou, China, to develop capabilities for operating an AV fleet.

 

Gaining approval to start tests in Punggol arguably marks an important step in ComfortDelGro&rsquo s AV ambitions, as it allows the company to deploy the capabilities it acquired in Guangzhou in other markets.

 

The transport operator recently signed a memorandum of understanding with another Chinese AV player, Hello Robotaxi, to collaborate on large-scale commercial robotaxi deployment in China and elsewhere. 

 

ComfortDelGro currently operates a fleet of over 42,200 taxis across mainland China, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore. It is the largest taxi operator in both Australia and Singapore. 

THE investment last week by transport operator ComfortDelGro Corporation (Comfort) into teleoperation company Ottopia marks the first by Comfort&rsquo s venture capital arm ComfortDelGro Ventures (CDG Ventures) in nearly four years. Investors may be wondering why it had taken the company this long to find another suitable target.

 

The answer may lie in CDG Ventures&rsquo structure.

 

CDG Ventures was set up in 2019 with US$100 million. Since then, it has announced three other investments: in logistics startup Haulio, on-demand mobility startup Swat, and autonomous vehicle safety startup Foretellix. It has also put S$30 million towards an Autonomous Vehicle Centre of Excellence, and invested four million euros (S$5.7 million) into sustainable mobility venture capital fund Shift4Good.

 

On Jan 11, CDG Ventures announced a US$4 million investment into Ottopia. The latter makes software that enables remote vehicle assistance for autonomous vehicles, which is in keeping with the theme of CDG Ventures&rsquo other investments. Yet, there is room for CDG Ventures to do more to support its parent.

 

Most corporate venture funds have two strategic purposes: learn about new business models and technology, and/or find a return on investment.

 

The first strategy is akin to a corporate paying tuition fees to explore and understand new technology and business models. Such a strategy often involves investing in early-stage startups that might not have revenue or customers.

 

The second strategy tends to see corporates taking stakes in late-stage or pre-IPO startups with the intention of exiting the investment with a tidy profit.

 

Learning the ropes

Regardless of strategy, however, CDG Ventures&rsquo pace of investments is unusual.

 

To give an example, listed peer ST Engineering&rsquo s corporate venture fund, which started out in 2017 with US$150 million in capital, has already made investments in 10 startups. This works out to a rate of roughly two startup investments a year.

 

Then there is CDG Ventures&rsquo investment into Shift4Good. Most corporate venture funds make investments as silent limited partners (LPs) of venture capital funds at the initial stage of their formation, to get a sense of the deals available on the market. The fund management fees are thought of as the cost of learning the ropes in the venture capital business.

 

CDG Ventures, however, is only stepping into these waters four years after its formation. In its media release on Jan 25 announcing the Shift4Good investment, Comfort said that it would look at startups identified by the fund and invest in them via the fund or separately.

 

If CDG Ventures had made this investment earlier, it would by now be seeing deals come its way from marketing itself to the ecosystem over the past three years.

 

The investments into Haulio and Swat, meanwhile, are just a drop in the bucket of its US$100 million fund size. CDG Ventures put US$1.5 million into Haulio, and US$740,000 into Swat.

 

The dollar amount put into Foretellix is unknown. But given that CDG Ventures was not leading the US$14 million funding round, it&rsquo s not likely to have plonked down the lion&rsquo s share.

 

One potential reason for this slower pace, industry insiders say, is a lack of autonomy. CDG Ventures may be dealing with the corporate inertia from an established business more than some of its other corporate venture peers.

 

This is because CDG Ventures is parked within Comfort&rsquo s corporate strategy team. Other corporate venture funds, such as Singtel&rsquo s Innov8 and ST Engineering Ventures, have a separate team and a head with significant autonomy. When Singtel set up Innov8, it also separated the team physically with an office space of its own at one-north.

 

Much to offer

The amount set aside for the fund is not an insignificant one, and more could probably be accomplished.

 

Comfort also has much to offer to startups, in terms of data and testbeds to validate their technologies or business models.

 

An autonomous team for CDG Ventures, with an independent head, could allow the venture capital arm to achieve its full potential.