Singapore's going to see self-driving Peugeot SUVs on its roads

People in Singapore are going to start seeing this Peugeot SUV driving itself on (a couple of) roads soon.

Europe's fifth largest carmaker has partnered with MIT self-driving spin-out Nutonomy, to test the Peugeot 3008 model in the island.

Nutonomy, which has been testing its software in a handful of self-driving Mitsubishis in Singapore for the past half year, says the new Peugeots will drive on the same small set of roads in the 0.77 square mile one-north business district.

PSA Group, which owns Peugeot, says it plans to use the opportunity to learn what components to build into future self-driving cars.

The Peugeot 3008 won Car of the Year 2017 in Geneva, at the International Motor Show. Credit: Getty Images

Outside of Singapore, Nutonomy is also running self-driving trials back home in Boston.

While Nutonomy is running limited trials over a small fleet right now, it expects to increase its Singapore cars by "several hundred" next year, according to a statement it provided to the Wall Street Journal.

"If all goes well, we'll have our software on hundreds if not thousands of [Peugeot] vehicles," Karl Iagnemma, Nutonomy's co-founder, was quoted as saying.

The launch of the Peugeots in Singapore comes some seven months after one of its driverless cars collided with a lorry.

Nutonomy said that the accident was due to a "rare combination of software anomalies" that affected how the car responded to other vehicles when changing lanes. The company halted testing on public roads for a month to investigate what went wrong.

"We've made improvements to our software system to eliminate these anomalies, and have extensively tested it... to ensure that our vehicles will operate safely going forward," the company said in an update in November last year.

Nutonomy is also trying to launch a self-driving taxi service eventually. It made small steps toward this with a partnership with regional ride-hailing app Grab in September last year, offering rides around one-north to the public.