Stellantis’s new STLA One platform, due next year, can accommodate autonomous vehicles after the Vauxhall and Peugeot owner decided to incorporate the needs of robotaxi operators, the company has said.

The global car maker has announced a deal with UK autonomous vehicles software provider Wayve and ride-share company Uber that will see it supplying vehicles for robotaxi trials starting this year in 10 cities, including London.

The first vehicles on Stellantis’s so-called L4-Ready Platforms (L4 meaning level four, the second highest autonomous capability) will be adapted versions of the K0 mid-size van range that includes the Vauxhall Vivaro, but Stellantis is also developing an autonomous-ready van platform, due for launch at the end of the decade, Stellantis technology head Ned Curic told Autocar.

By including all the tech that robotaxis need within the platform, Stellantis will become very popular with operators who don’t have pay for retrofitted vehicles, or so the company hopes.

“For them, they’ll love it because they don't have to think about integration,” said Curic. “The [vehicles] have the cameras. They have the compute. They have the wiring. They have all the redundancy they need. So that's the value they get.”

Bringing all that capability on the STLA One platform – which, Stellantis says, will form the basis of two million cars sold globally per year by 2035 – allows the company to offer the robotaxis companies smaller, cheaper vehicles.

“What we see today in robotaxis is that over 90% of the drives are with a single passenger or two passengers,” said Curic, citing the company’s experience working with Waymo. “We need a car platform that's very small.”

STLA One was originally to be called STLA Small but has been reconfigured to allow bigger cars as well as incorporating robotaxis, with all their requirements for redundant systems such as steering and braking, which will take over if the primary system breaks. Other essential equipment includes additional cameras, wiring, more computing power and even washers to clean the sensors.

“It’s lot of small details that if you do car by car, after the fact in a serialised vehicle, costs in some cases $50,000 per car,” said. Curic. “When you're doing a serial line production, you don't have that problem. You're adding a little bit of a cost, but it's not exponential.”

Stellantis didn’t say when the first STLA One robotaxi will appear but the first regular car on the platform will be the new Peugeot 208, which is expected to be revealed at the Paris motor show in October.

As well as Wayve and Uber, Stellantis also has an agreement to supply vehicles for a partnership that includes Estonian ride-share company Bolt and Chinese AV software company Pony.AI, which will test Stellantis vans in Luxembourg.

By offering turnkey autonomous-ready cars, Stellantis hopes to tap into a robotaxi market that, consulting firm BCG estimates, could grow to between 700,000 and three million vehicles by 2035. Of that, China is expected to see the bulk of growth but Curic also has high hopes for European and US markets, which have a number of robotaxi trials.

Currently, few car makers are able to provide the kind of autonomous-ready cars that Stellantis is offering. Tesla has shown off its two-seat Robotaxi while Geely’s Zeekr brand has built Waymo the dedicated Ojai robotaxi vehicle with six radar sensors, four lidar sensors and 13 cameras. Ten wipers clean the sensors.