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This is a robo-taxi. It is a small bus that doesn't have a driver. It is called "CUbE," for "Continental Urban mobility Experience." The CUbE presently includes Conti radar sensors and cameras. Further development will add the 3D flash LiDAR system that the company is developing to achieve a compre- hensive image of a vehicle's surroundings without mechan- ical movement (i.e., you've probably seen what appear to be spinning chicken buckets affixed to the tops of test vehicles; there will be no spin with these much more compact, circa 2020 devices from Conti). The sensors provide information as to such things as what's in the vehicle's surroundings, whether it is other vehicles or pedestrians. The vehicle must also have aware- ness of things like traffic signals. But what is absolutely important is for the vehicle to "know" where it is in space. It can know what's around it without necessarily knowing where it is. So the Continental Self-Driving Car project personnel are working on utilizing mapping information— including even an echo map, that is based on data collected from radar sensors—to make a determination of where the vehicle is in space at all times. Another important aspect of CUbE is the ability to receive information from the infrastructure (say there is an accident ahead) and be able to communicate to not only exterior infrastructure, but also to pedestrians that it has detected. (An interesting aspect of Conti's development in this space of shared mobility is that it isn't simply working on the hardware and the associated algorithms, but it has also made a minority investment in EasyMile SAS, a French technology firm that with its vehicle-building partner, Ligier Group, has been publically testing CUbE-like people movers in locales around the world, from downtown Dubai to Darwin, Australia.) CUbE is the sort of transportation that's meant for "the last mile." That is, to get from a parking garage or train station or another place where you might arrive having come into a city from an outlying area, then taking something like this driverless shuttle for the final stage of the journey. But there is another development that Conti has made toward this end. What they say is the "world's first" 48-volt powered e-bike—yes, as in "bicycle"—motor with a fully integrated, continuously variable planetary transmission housed in a single drive unit. One thing's for certain: transportation tomorrow may resemble transportation of today, but there will be some fundamental changes, whether that takes the form of a bus without a driver or a bike with an electric motor. Yes, Conti has even developed a 48-volt motor for bikes. But what makes this one different is that there is also a continuously variable planetary gearing system in that housing: yes, a transmission. 28 COVER STORY