Four years after Sales-Lentz bought its first four autonomous shuttles from a competitor, Ohmio opens its first European office in Luxembourg after winning a public contract with CFL. (Photo: Ohmio)

Four years after Sales-Lentz bought its first four autonomous shuttles from a competitor, Ohmio opens its first European office in Luxembourg after winning a public contract with CFL. (Photo: Ohmio)

At the beginning of 2023, the Australian-New Zealand specialist Ohmio will operate two autonomous shuttles on behalf of national railway company CFL. It is opening its first office in Luxembourg, where potential partnerships with the CFL, IEE and Sales-Lentz offer interesting prospects.

On the surface, everything seems to run by itself. But when Ohmio's first two shuttles operate in Luxembourg--early next year--on behalf of Luxembourg Railways (CFL), which had published a call for tenders in 2020, it will be the result of almost four years of negotiations.

The first time this company, originally from Australia and New Zealand, heard about Luxembourg was at the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems in Copenhagen in 2018, where the executives met Joost Ortjens, business developer of Luxinnovation, says Trade and Invest. From this meeting, a "tailor-made" meeting was organised.

Ohmio met with the control body Luxcontrol, and then with Sales-Lentz, which had offered to be Ohmio's local maintenance partner. It also met the intelligent detection solutions provider IEE, who invited the company to use office space on its premises for its Luxembourg branch, the first in Europe. The branch was entrusted to Robert Sykora. The lease will soon be signed.

"Ohmio's experience and achievements in Korea, as well as its modular platform approach and first Level 4 autonomous driving experience were among the most interesting aspects of their offering," commented CFL's Business Unit head Carlo Hansen.

The connected infrastructure specialist that switched to autonomous shuttles in 2015 has already received calls for business in Finland last week, for a major project in the UK and for other projects in Austria, Portugal, Italy and Germany.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.

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