World’s first self-driving taxis launched in Singapore

World's first self-driving taxi service was on 25 August 2016 launched in Singapore. With this, Singapore became the first
country in the world to launch such service, beating Uber Technologies Inc by mere days to public road tests of a
technology that could revolutionize the transport industry.
•    The trial, although small, illustrates how intense the global race to develop autonomous driving vehicles has
become.
•    Singapore based nuTonomy began testing a free taxi-hailing service in a small business district in Singapore called
one-north, a campus-like space dominated by tech firms and biotechnology companies. 
•    The trial was given the approval of the Singapore government, which has long sought to turn the city-state into a
hub for disruptive technology through firms like nuTonomy.
•    NuTonomy’s test vehicles, a Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car, will have a computer engineer and
backup human driver during the trial phase in case anything goes wrong.
•    These vehicles can be hailed by select members of the public using a smartphone app. 
•    The company will also test its vehicles on a 6 kilometer (3.7 mile) route.