Self-Driving Cars in a City Like No Other
Autonomous transportation launching to 125,000 residents in Florida
A Retirement City, Now With Robots
Voyage is bringing self-driving cars to a retirement community (and city) like no other: The Villages, Florida. With 125,000 residents, 750 miles of road and 3 distinct downtowns, The Villages is a truly special place to live. Today, we’re excited to announce that Voyage has started testing its self-driving fleet within the community. Beginning in early 2018, we’ll start rolling out a door-to-door self-driving taxi service to residents.
The Villages, Florida is Voyage’s second deployment of self-driving cars in the past 6 months, following our successful launch at The Villages, San Jose. We’re also excited to share that we’ve completed a Series A to help fuel this expansion — bringing our 2017 fundraising total to more than $20M.
“Villagers love their lifestyle and driverless technology offers a promising new option for staying mobile and active in a safe, affordable way.” – Kelsea Morse Manly, Director of Operations at The Villages
Our Product
We’re bringing a door-to-door self-driving taxi service to the 750 miles of road at The Villages. When fully operational, all 125,000 residents will have the ability to summon a self-driving car to their doorstep using the Voyage mobile app, then travel anywhere within the bounds of the community fully autonomously. In the autonomous vehicle field, this level of driverless technology is called ‘Level 4 automation.’
And boy are there places to go! The Villages features over 100 dining options, 8 major grocery stores, 648 holes of golf, 7.8 million square feet of commercial and retail buildings, 3 movie theaters, over 80 tennis courts, a 297-bed regional hospital, a world-class charter school for the children of the thousands of employees of The Villages, and much more. With so many places to go, we predict high demand from residents for fast, safe trips with Voyage.
“Wow! The future is here already.” — A Villager
The Villages, Florida
The Villages is massive. Spread over 750 miles of road and 40 square miles of land in Central Florida, the U.S. Census ranked The Villages as the fastest-growing U.S. city for a second year in a row in 2014. Its population is larger than 31 of the 67 counties in Florida. What’s more, The Villages’ low crime rate makes it the safest single-site development in the United States.
With so many miles of road, high-resolution mapping of the community is a crucial piece of the puzzle to solve before we can serve residents. We are thrilled to be partnering with CARMERA, a world-class provider of real-time, street-level intelligence for autonomous vehicles. We simply wouldn’t be able to move as fast as we would like without a partner like CARMERA, for what we believe is the largest deployment (by area size) of self-driving cars in the world.
CARMERA is mapping all 750 miles of road within The Villages, and will provide continuous updates of localization and navigation-critical data that Voyage self-driving cars will consume on the fly. We are especially excited about this partnership given our shared vision of working side-by-side with communities, to provide huge value to all involved.
The scale is certainly impressive, but the Villagers are really what make this community exceptional. In just a short time we’ve met so many enthusastic and eager Villagers who cannot wait to travel in a self-driving car on a regular basis. The outpouring of support has been overwhelming, and we can’t wait to serve all Villagers!
“I’m a resident of The Villages, and think your service will be both appreciated and successful here.” — A Villager
The Sunshine State
Voyage is making Florida our second home, and we’ve been welcomed with open arms! State Senator Jeff Brandes has been paving the way for autonomous vehicles in the state since 2012, passing landmark legislation in 2016 to enable fully driverless cars on the roads of Florida. We couldn’t be more excited to work with amazing Floridians, like Senator Brandes, to bring fully autonomous technology to the state.
“This is our generation’s transition from horse-and-buggy to the Model T.” – State Senator Jeff Brandes
We also see our new home in Florida as an exciting advantage. Not only are we in close proximity with the many other massive community developments, but Robotics and Computer Vision talent is plentiful. With Magic Leap, NASA, Disney, SpaceX, Luminar and many other companies nearby, we know we’re in the right place.
Whether it’s helping those with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, vision impairment, or just those who want to get around with less friction, we’ve seen first-hand the positive impact autonomous transportation can have for seniors. With Voyage’s successful deployment at the 4,000-resident Villages in San Jose, we are now energized to tackle the challenges of a city-scale community and beyond.
Does scaling to tens of thousands of daily passengers excite you? We’d love to meet you to discuss a role at Voyage.
