With all the headlines heralding an autonomous future just around the corner, you might imagine that the French company's Navya's plant to build low-speed autonomous shuttles might be one that could create one of the first self-driving vehicle businesses. But just a year after an IPO that valued it at 190 million Euros, Navya's shuttle sales are down by 50% in the first half of the year and the company is backing away from its autonomous shuttle business in favor of developing Level 4 systems for 3rd party customers. This pivot, along with the Navya-involved traffic incidents recently documented by The Drive show that the once-heated autonomous drive space is turning out to be a lot trickier than some of its "pioneers" thought.

Navya's "highlights" from the first half of 2019 show just how tough the going has been for the French shuttle company. A new CEO, Étienne Hermite, has taken over and the company is drawing on 15 million Euros of financing from the European Investment Bank, has secured 20 million Euros in convertible bonds and signed a memo of understanding with ESMO and SK Telecom to develop 5G-based autonomous drive technology. The shift away from selling shuttles to living off financing as a technology developer ends Navya's bid at becoming one of the first autonomous vehicle supplier businesses, a sector which the company now admits is "experimental." Navya will "maintain shuttle production during this transition phase," but having recently opened a factory in Michigan its manufacturing business will wind down as it reduces sales and marketing costs.

Like Elon Musk, Hermite seems to be at least partially blaming (largely nonexistent) regulation for what seems to have pretty clearly been a premature rush into a nonexistent market with insufficiently-developed technology. According to the new Navya CEO