Volkswagen, Mobileye and its subsidiary MOIA presented the ID.Buzz AD at the UITP Summit 2025 in Hamburg this week. Based on the electric VW ID.Buzz bus as a vehicle platform, 27 sensors (13 cameras, 9 lidar, 5 radar) were integrated and the software-based self-driving technology and Mobility-as-a-Service platform were presented. The aim is to offer a turnkey system to operators of robotaxi fleets and public transport companies, both the hardware and the software that these mobility service providers could integrate into their systems.
The [ID.Buzz AD] is part of a comprehensive end-to-end solution that also includes a software ecosystem and services for operators of autonomous mobility services. With this, MOIA offers public and private mobility providers a turnkey package to launch autonomous services quickly, safely, and at scale.
What MOIA is saying is something like this: Here is the complete package of car, sensors, self-driving and management software, and it’s turnkey ready for you to use and scale immediately.
But how far has MOIA really come and how does this approach compare with other providers?
Hardware-Package
Volkswagen/MOIA have announced their intention to produce 10,000 of these vehicles per year from 2026/27. The first vehicles are to be used from 2026. In addition to Hamburg, they will also be used in Los Angeles, where Uber will be the first mobility partner.
There is no doubt that VW will be able to build 10,000 of these vehicles complete with sensors. It is a hardware combination of vehicle and sensors. Volkswagen has a century of experience with this.
But this experience and hardware combination count for little if the software for autonomous driving is not ready. And whether the MaaS platform offers an advantage over what Uber and others offer remains to be seen.
What else disappoints me a little is the fact that the vehicle still has space for a driver. And it seems to be staying that way for the time being. So far, there has been no concept of the ID.Buzz that shows it without a steering wheel, but with a possible third row of seats. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of developments and looking at this from the perspective of Silivon Valley, where these visions are already on public roads with Zoox, the Zeekr vehicle and the Tesla Cybercab.
Software
How far along is MOIA with its self-driving software? There are some impressive videos circulating of Mobileye driving through Munich, but little on MOIA driving so far. Not only have hardly any pictures of the specially marked MOIA vehicles in the wild been published, indicating very few test vehicles and/or very few test drives on public transport, there are also no interior views of autonomous driving at all.
Even videos curated by MOIA itself of rides with safety drivers from inside the vehicle, let alone without a driver, cannot be found. And that’s in the year before you want to make a big start here.
Incidentally, this has nothing to do with the fact that “German manufacturers just work quietly and then deliver“, as I keep hearing from Germany. If you really want to develop this kind of technology, then you can’t avoid spending many kilometers on public roads in public traffic with many vehicles. This also makes them conspicuous in public, which attracts attention and automatically leads to videos and pictures being circulated in the media. But so far there has been almost no sign of this.
Waymo, Cruise, Zoox or Tesla, even Baidu, WeRide, AutoX or Pony.AI could not avoid it. Accordingly, there are already many videos of their vehicles in the wild. Long before these manufacturers had their robotaxis ready for operation, first with safety drivers and then without drivers, there were plenty of videos circulating.
The fact that this does not exist at MOIA only leads to the conclusion that MOIA, together with its partners VW and Mobileye, still has a few busy years ahead of it.
I also heard feedback from my international circle of acquaintances, who have already been able to ride with driverless Waymos and Cruise, as well as MOIA with safety drivers, about how the rides were. There is still a lot of work to be done, as the safety drivers had to intervene several times during these trips. That was their experience, and may of course have already changed.
Software-Partner
Presumably MOIA, VW and Mobileye have already realized this, because at the aforementioned UITP Summit 2025, MOIA primarily praised the vehicle – i.e. the hardware combination. MOIA appears to be actively looking for partners to provide its own self-driving software.
Soft/Hardware-Package
A word about this package. MOIA presented a hardware combination (car plus sensors) with the ID.Buzz AD. A considerable number of other developers (Waymo, Baidu/Apollo, Pony.AI, WeRide, AutoX, Nuro…) are launching a software/hardware combo: sensors plus self-driving software and MaaS. Zoox, Tesla and GM/Cruise offer a complete package: Car, sensors, self-driving software and MaaS.
While some of these are sensor agnostic, i.e. open to a wide variety of sensor technologies with Baidu/Apollo being the most prominent example, some others are limited to their own sensor stack – Waymo as an example, who have even developed their own sensors.
How is MOIA doing?
MOIA seems to be weakest when it comes to software. Mobility providers have already had their fingers burnt with it, as many of them have tested shuttle buses from providers such as Navya, Easy Mile or Olli and found them unconvincing in terms of autonomous driving. Getting involved with a provider like MOIA, whose self-driving software has so far made little appearance, as mentioned above, could make mobility providers hesitate. Especially when you consider the price per vehicle, which will be in the six-figure range. It doesn’t help that VW’s reputation as a software developer has suffered considerably in light of the CARIAD debacle. And this is supposed to improve with MOIA?
When a Zeekr vehicle prepared for Waymo, which is designed similarly to an ID.Buzz, shows up at the UITP Summit 2025 during the presentation of the ID.Buzz AD and steals the show, even though neither Waymo and Zeekr, nor Zeekr’s parent company Geely were there as exhibitors or employees were listed as speakers and panelists, then you can see what a steep path MOIA has ahead of it.
This article was also published in German.
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