Business models for the deployment of autonomous shuttle services on private sites

Pilots with autonomous shuttle services are on the rise. While research is often focussed on the acceptance of this technology, few have focussed on their business models. This paper intends to fill this gap by providing a cost framework for three different scenarios depicting autonomous shuttle services on private sites. Based on the insights of a living lab with an autonomous shuttle, the costs and activities required to offer these services were identified. This led to the calculation of the total costs for each service. Also, sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the impacts depending on the number of users, the presence of a remote operator or by showing a best- and worse- case scenario to deal with the remaining uncertainties. The results show that there is potential for the implementation of profitable autonomous shuttle services, but the willingness-to-pay for it is still rather low. Therefore, acceptance studies to raise user awareness are still necessary.