 From Milpitas, California, at the edge of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering autonomous vehicles, brought to you by Western Digital. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Milpitas, California at the Western Digital event. It's the Autotuck Council Autonomous Vehicle event, about 300 people talking about all these really complicated issues around autonomous vehicle, a wide variety of startups and enterprises, and it's a really interesting space because there's, as somebody said in the keynote, there's literally thousands of problems to solve. But one of the angles is really on the public transportation side. Really excited to have a really innovative startup and welcome Emmanuel Spera. He is the CEO of Next Future Transportation. Manuel, welcome. Hi, Jeff. Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely. So for the folks that aren't familiar, you can go to the website. There's a great demo video that you guys have of the solution. What are you guys building? So we're building something very particular because so far you see all those company presenting what is well known as an autonomous car. So let's build something that can let us read our newspaper while we are commuting. And very nice, a lot of money has been invested in that. But the reality is that how are we taking care of the gridlock that are affecting our city? Are we moving around enough people? Are we solving the problem of congestion? I'll say no because it doesn't matter if we have an EV, an autonomous driving vehicle, or an SUV, or a car, you still have congestion. You still need to have a large number of cars to move around people. So the only viable solution is to use buses. Buses have been there in the last 100 years and they are very expensive. Actually, the most expensive assets that cities and municipalities are using, so they're using taxpayer money to pay those assets, and they are underutilized because you have a high demand in peak time, so people use buses, but on the rest of the day, when there are no peak time, there is very low usage rate. I'll say around 20, 25%. So take a look at those buses. They are empty all the time. So our solution is about modularizing this kind of transportation. So literally, we took a bus and we divided the bus in section. So you have six modules that are coupled together are the same length and capacity of a standard bus, city bus. But with the modularization, we can create a system which literally breathe because we have longer vehicle in peak time when there is higher demand and shorter vehicle when there is very low demand. When you have just a few passengers. And the magic is that when those pods are connected one to another, they share them to another space, by the way, all of that can be done autonomously. The coupling is all done autonomously. And we can start from tomorrow because we can have a driver when we begin using the system. And when the technology allows us to be autonomous, we're going to run the autonomous operating system on that. This can be done autonomously now in closed environment where you don't have a mixed traffic environment. But we demonstrated that this could be done. That's funny that you came at the problem from a bus and breaking the bus into modular pieces. When I was prepping for our interview and doing some research, I looked at it more as kind of a combination of a bunch of individual passenger vehicles that then create almost more like a train. But it's the same concept. And it made me think of really kind of IP networks where when you can bring them all together into an autonomous unit and they operate as one, much more efficient, they don't need space in between. And then really an interesting concept where that packet can kind of jump on to another network if it needs to go down another route. So the fact that these things can couple and uncouple, the fact that the people can change units within the structure, you're really adding kind of a smart transportation that then can come together and really act like a city bus. Really fascinating way to look at that problem. Absolutely. It's simple. So the technology to create that, if you look at those parts, seemed like a very far away. But we were able to create this now using all of the shelf components. And literally when you give people, passenger, an option, this kind of option, they're going to love it. So think about now when you need to go from point A to point B, you need to take a taxi, ride a bicycle, take a Uber, so change and have an intermodal transportation to reach your destination. And it's going to take a while to reach your destination. With this system, you just jump on another pod and you change your destination within the same system. So it can all be controlled by an app that you carry or by screen that are on the pods that tell you you need to go northbound, go on pod number one. You need to go eastbound, go on pod number two. So the system is able to reorganize itself based on the user's needs. So we're here, we're sponsored by Western Digitalist as part of their whole Data Makes Possible program. From a data perspective and an AI perspective, how did you have to approach that problem a little bit differently? And what were some of the challenges that enabled you to overcome to create this unique solution? So before you were saying that we are all here at this conference and we need to solve like thousands of problems. We actually have to solve like millions of problems. Billions of problems. And AI is the only way we can overcome such a problem in some area. Obviously we need to take control of the basics of the beginning of this journey. And clearly the AI will be amazing when the system is fully working and you can predict information, you can connect with the passenger, with the user of the system directly and predict behavior, predict needs. And on the passenger side, then also you're gonna use the AI to predict how the system is flowing, meaning how the vehicle are using the lane, if there are gridlock somewhere. So how you can on the fly, reorganize the way those vehicles, those spots we're gonna move around the city to go over obstacle and reach a destination faster and ultimately in our case, where is the best play to couple with another vehicle based on passenger destination and length of the journey. Right. So Emmanuel, and this isn't just a concept, you guys actually have working prototypes out in the field. So how many do you have deployed? Kind of what's your roadmap and hope for kind of a rollout? Or do you have as a partner strategy? What's kind of your plan to scale? So we had this concept, the company was made in 2015, we're always showing this concept in 2016, beginning of 2017. In one year, we were able to deliver to our first customer, which is the Dubai government. So last February, during the World Government Summit in Dubai, we showcased two full spec vehicles that were able to couple and the couple autonomously and move around the venue. And we've been testing them since January in Dubai in a closed area or in the, in particular events where we could showcase and have passengers on boats and drive them for a small route. And clearly our solution is not for OEM car makers, it's for municipalities that really need to solve a problem and they've been stuck literally with the bus in the last hundred years. There have been no major innovation in the bus industry. The only innovation I see now, they are electrifying buses. So now you have a way more expensive assets, which is still underutilized. So I spend more and it's still no one, no one, no one use it. So what we're doing, we are going to provide a fleet to municipalities and Dubai will be the first, especially since they're having their Dubai 2020 exhibition. And we hope we can provide them with a fleet by that time, think about that. 120 pods are the same as 20 buses. Right, right. And that's your targeted first deploy, something like that. Yeah, exactly. And the cost is even lower than a bus. All right. Well, Manuel, it's really cool technology. I just love the innovation in terms of, you know, kind of slicing the problem in a slightly different way, being really innovative and partnering. As you said, you know, you have not raised $100 million in all this craziness and actually deploying. So really exciting story. Thanks for sharing with it and we excited to watch it unfold over the next couple of years. Absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. All right, it's Emmanuel. I'm Jeff. We're the AutoTech Council, part of Western Digital's data makes possible. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.