MC JV Launches PoC Autonomous-Driving Pilot Project in Jakarta's BSD City

Dec 10, 2021 15:00 JST

Source: Mitsubishi Corporation

TOKYO, Dec 10, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is pleased to announce that its joint venture with Macnica Inc. (Macnica) will be taking advantage of support from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to carry out a proof-of-concept (PoC) autonomous-driving pilot project in Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) City, located in Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia. JICA's support comes via its second plan to assist small and medium enterprises with their efforts to grow, validate and commercialize businesses aimed at helping to achieve the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs). JICA announced this second round of support in fiscal year 2020.

JICA's plan has several aims. Not only does it seek to leverage the advanced technologies, products and ideas of Japan's private sector to help address challenges being faced in developing countries, but it is also designed to promote those enterprises' overseas businesses, and by extension, invigorate the Japanese economy. Having praised MC's ongoing city-management operations in Indonesia, JICA has adopted as part of its support plan our proposed driverless-vehicle mobility service, which aims to further improve BSD City as a smart city in Indonesia. The period of the MC-Macnica consignment contract with JICA will run from December 10, 2021 until September 29, 2023.

MC has been promoting its city-management (smart city) operations both in Japan and around the world. They are new businesses and an example of what we intend to build on as next-generation earnings drivers. We are also confident of their potential as a business model that can effectively marry digital data platforms born of digital transformation (DX) with energy transformation (EX) initiatives aimed at decarbonization.

One of these businesses is a collaboration with Sinar Mas Land (SML) that is being undertaken to raise the value of municipal infrastructure and services throughout BSD City. Having already entered into a basic agreement, MC and SML, which is one of Indonesia's largest and diversified real estate developers in Indonesia, have now begun working together in the aspect of town management by equipping it with smart / digital city services.

This new PoC project through our joint venture with Macnica represents the first offering on the MC-Sinar Mas Land city-services menu. It will endeavor to assess the needs of the region's residents, workers and visitors with respect to driverless mobility services, the aims of which are to make municipal transportation more convenient. It should also validate the region's commercial potential for large-scale mobility services. The pilot project, which will run for one year, will involve the operation of autonomously controlled electric vehicles (EVs) throughout office and commercial-facility areas in the bustling BSD City zone. Residents, workers and visitors alike will be encouraged to actually take rides in the EVs, which will be equipped with Japanese technologies.

MC shall continue to work with SML and its other partners, whether they be within or outside the MC family. Through our collaborations, we shall strive to introduce a variety of smart- or digital-city services that are driven primarily by data on basic city infrastructure, as well as renewable energies aimed at carbon neutrality. We hope that these and other efforts like them will help to complete a BSD City as smart city that can serve as a model for future autonomous distributed communities.

Navya Arma

BSD City, located in Tangerang, Banten, is SML's flagship town development that encompasses a total land area of approximately 6,000 hectares. Developed since the mid-1980s, BSD City is a thriving development area with businesses, schools, shopping malls, hospitals, hotels, and convention centers. This undertaking will enlarge BSD City's existing development footprint and add to its current population of 200,000 residents. BSD City is home to the Apple Developer Academy, co-run by Apple and several local Indonesian universities, as well as international universities such as Monash University from Australia.

Mitsubishi Corporation
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Source: Mitsubishi Corporation
Sectors: EVs, Transportation, Smart Cities