The autonomous and electric bus that was going to be incorporated into the Montañas del Fuego route, through the CITIES Timanfaya project promoted by the previous government group, has shown "failures" in its first tests, as confirmed by the current CEO of the Tourist Centers, Benjamín Perdomo.
"The bus, on certain occasions, remains braked and does not move forward," Perdomo detailed, explaining that after two weeks of testing, it has been decided to "halt" them and move the bus to a warehouse of the Centers, where technicians from the Carlos III University of Madrid, which is one of the entities that has participated in this project, are reviewing it.
"They are looking for a way to prevent that from happening and they are investigating there," said the CEO of the Tourist Centers. "They are trying to fix it and for safety reasons, it has been decided not to continue doing the tests until that is okay," he added.
A project with an investment of more than one million euros
This initiative was launched under the mandate of CC in the Cabildo and was announced as a "pioneering" experience in which, in addition to the Carlos III University of Madrid, there was the participation of other Spanish entities of "recognized prestige" in the sector such as the Spanish Road Association, 2RK Consultants in intelligent transport, Mapfre España, the Flight Mechanics Group of Systems, Vázquez y Torres Ingeniería, GMR Homologaciones, Albufera Energy Storage, and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology, involving in the process "20 doctors and more than 40 university graduates." Furthermore, from the Tourist Centers it was stated then that the project had "the maximum interest of the General Directorate of Traffic of the Ministry of the Interior.
The objective of the CITIES project, which was launched in September 2018, was to have a prototype of an autonomous and electric bus that would be operating in 18 months and that would be incorporated into the Volcano Route, in the Montañas del Fuego. The vehicle, as clarified by the then delegate of the Tourist Centers, Echedey Eugenio, was not going to be without a driver but would allow the driver to "pay less attention to the road."
The budget for the initiative was approximately 1,012,949 euros from the Canary Islands Development Fund (FDCAN). "It is not buying a bus, but paying for a process to obtain that technology and then own the patents," said Eugenio, who explained that the idea was that all the patents generated would be owned by the Centers and that if someone wanted to buy that technology, they would have to talk to the Centers and pay for it.
Now, once the prototype was finished, tests were being carried out in Timanfaya for "about two weeks", with the aim of incorporating the bus into the route if they were successful. However, after the detected failures, it is unknown when the vehicle will be put into operation. "When they manage to solve it, I imagine that tests will continue to be done until the bus completes the entire route," said the current CEO of the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism of the Cabildo, Benjamín Perdomo.
