Switzerland’s edge in Autonomous Mobility 2025: collaboration, smart regulation and informed risk 

From vision to action: key insights from Jürg Röthlisberger, Jeffrey Tumlin and Nicolas Morael on how Switzerland can harness autonomous mobility’s benefits 

Introduction

Switzerland enjoys trains that run on the minute and roads that show some of the world’s lowest fatality rates. At first glance, the country might seem to have little to gain from autonomous vehicles. Yet during a recent panel hosted by SAAM, three voices with different backgrounds: Jürg Röthlisberger, director of the Swiss Federal Road Office (FEDRO), Jeffrey Tumlin, former head of San Francisco’s transport agency, and Nicolas Morael, director of Autonomous Mobility at Transdev, argued that driverless technology has the potential to improve Switzerland’s mobility system even further. 

Their takeaway is cautiously optimistic. Large fleets of autonomous vehicles have already logged tens of millions of kilometres with fewer injury crashes than human-driven cars, yet the technology is still maturing and occasional incidents remind operators to stay humble. Early ridership surveys point to solid, but not universal, public acceptance, and on-demand AVs could one day fill the gap between private cars and fixed-route transit, delivering space, cost and energy savings. Switzerland’s new Federal Ordinance on Automated Driving, in force since March 2025, aims to provide a single national approval channel, avoiding the regulatory patchwork that still slows France and Germany. What remains is a mindset shift: use regulation as an enabler, treat minor setbacks as learning fuel, and link public support to hard results in safety and operating efficiency. 

The article that follows distils the panel into five parts: why safety comes first, where the technology stands today, how Switzerland’s rulebook compares to Europe’s, why informed risk-taking will decide who moves from pilot projects to everyday service and Switzerland’s secret ingredient: our unique collaboration approach.  

Meet our panelists  

Jürg Röthlisberger 
Director of the Federal Road Office 

Short bio

Civil engineer (ETH Zürich) and Director of the Swiss Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) since 2015. He oversees national road infrastructure, road-safety strategy and, as of 2025, implementation of the new Ordinance on Automated Driving. 

Jeffrey Tumlin 
Former Director of SFMTA (Transportation San Francisco) 

Short bio

Urban planner and mobility strategist. Served as Director of Transportation at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency from 2019 to 2024, after two decades at Nelson\Nygaard and a stint launching Oakland’s DOT. Known for data-driven reforms and thought leadership on street pricing and automation. 

Nicolas Morael 
Director Autonomous Mobility Transdev 

Short bio

Director of Autonomous Mobility at Transdev, where he leads global safety and deployment programmes for driverless shuttles and robotaxis. A long-time champion of rigorous safety cases, he coordinates projects from Geneva to Shenzhen and steers Transdev’s participation in EU Horizon initiatives. 

I. Safety first 

Why should AVs be safer? Unlike human drivers, they 

• Watch the road 360 degrees, 100 % of the time, 
• Never tire, text, drink or speed, and 
• React in milliseconds, guided by redundant sensors and rule-based software. 

“Waymo cars always follow the speed limit. When a street is full of Waymos, every other driver ends up respecting the limit too. … perhaps the biggest safety impact isn’t that it drives better than humans — it makes human drivers better, too.” 
— Jeffrey Tumlin 

Tumlin’s citation is backed by data. A Swiss Re claims study comparing Waymo’s autonomous fleet with human-driven cars found an 88 % drop in property-damage claims and a 92 % drop in bodily-injury claims. Those numbers explain why insurers and regulators take the technology seriously, even before full commercial rollout.

Today real-world examples

1. Waymo (United States) 

Waymo current 1500-vehicle fleet logged 90.7 million fully autonomous km (meaning no driver and no safety operator in the car) across Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin by January 2025. In peer-reviewed crash data, those km translate into: 

• 92 % fewer pedestrian injuries 
• 82 % fewer cyclist and motorcyclist injuries 
• 96 % fewer intersection crashes causing injuries 

2. Pony.ai (China) 

Pony.ai says it has logged 32 million km on public roads (5 million of them fully driverless) and, through its “PonyWorld” digital twin, runs ≈ 16 billion virtual km a year.  

In the company’s unaudited Q4 2024 results, co-founder and CTO Dr Tiancheng Lou claimed the company has yielded a 16-fold improvement in safety metrics and driven insurance premiums for its robotaxis down to about half those of human-driven cabs. The remark, published via GlobeNewswire, helped lift Pony.ai’s share price on the day of release, proof of how valuable the gains could be if independent reviews corroborate them. For now, however, the figures remain self-reported and unaudited; external validation is still pending. 

Sources: Pony.ai and Globenewswire 

3. The view from Switzerland 

Local pilots remain modest: think Ultimo in Geneva (3 vehicles so far) or the Furttal project near Zurich (8 vehicles in 2026) but they already collect precious data for FEDRO and academic partners. The lesson is clear: large-scale operations abroad already generate the safety and reliability evidence Swiss regulators will soon expect at home.  

For Switzerland, the question is less “does the technology work?” and more “how fast can we adapt our grid, our depots and our approval process so it works here?” 

II. Regulation: Europe’s many frameworks and Switzerland’s edge 

Advancing autonomous vehicles beyond pilot projects is both about technology and paperwork. Sensors and algorithms still have to master Europe’s narrower streets, mixed traffic and winter weather, yet an equally large challenge is administrative: every EU country has its own rulebook, so developers must navigate multiple approval paths before a service can cross borders. 

2 Two examples from Europe’s early AV regulations 

Each framework differs in definitions, liability rules and technical tests. Operators must re-engineer their safety cases every time they cross a border. 

Switzerland’s streamlined federal path

Switzerland chose a different route. The Federal Ordinance on Automated Driving (OAD), in force since 1 March 2025, appoints the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) as the lead authority for granting operating permits for Level 3 and 4 services. Cantons will still need implementation guidelines, wich are currently being drafted, to align local traffic orders with those permits, but the legal structure is in place. No operator has a commercial license yet, mainly because no vehicle has completed Swiss homologation; the framework, however, tells everyone what the regulatory landscape will look like for the coming years. 

“This moment resembles early aviation. Get the regulatory model right from the start.” 
— Jeffrey Tumlin 

Tumlin’s “Civil Aviation Board” analogy should resonate in Bern. Early aviators faced unknown risks, so regulators mapped every conceivable failure, wrote strict protocols and demanded redundancy before any plane carried passengers. The pay-off was public trust and a safety record that still outperforms other modes. For autonomous vehicles the recipe is similar: one clear regulator, transparent data flows, and an approval path that lets pilots scale after they hit common, measurable safety benchmarks. 

3. What gives Switzerland the edge? 

1. A unique regulatory framework, a lead in Europe, if not worldwide. The Federal Ordinance on Automated Driving (OAD) is one of the few national laws in Europe that already covers commercial Level-3 / 4 services.
2. Central approval for pilots, local approval for service. All experimental projects (“pilots”) are green-lit by FEDRO. Once a vehicle is type-approved, individual cantons decide whether the proposed Operating Design Domain (ODD) fits their roads and traffic plans. That split allows local realities to shape day-to-day service.
3. Swiss-only homologation option (Art. 50 VAF). An AV that is not yet EU type-approved can still obtain a national Swiss certificate, letting companies launch here first and pursue EU conformity later.
4. Close, stable public-sector dialogue. Companies deal with a small circle of decision-makers: FEDRO for national issues and canton authorities for ODD validation.
5. Political focus on cost control, not new subsidies. Parliament sees automation as a tool to maintain high service levels while easing public transport budgets. That cost-reduction view puts constructive pressure on regulators to take safe, data-backed projects from trial to revenue service.
6. Geopolitical and economic stability. Switzerland’s predictable legal environment and strong IP protection make it an attractive place for firms to base European headquarters and test commercial AV deployments.

IV. Risk-Taking Mindset: from top-down rules to bottom-up progress 

Switzerland can only unlock the full value of autonomous mobility if it treats regulation as an enabler rather than a brake. Jürg Röthlisberger framed the issue in simple terms: 

“For the public sector, the only thing that truly matters is the added value. I see two measurable outcomes: efficiency (in space and cost) and road safety. When we talk about use cases and added value instead of business models, people understand why subsidies are justified.” — Jürg Röthlisberger

1. Trial and error is part of the plan 

The technology has to evolve in the real world. It needs exposure to genuine edge cases, situations that actually happen every day, to learn and adapt. Because road layouts and driving habits differ from one country to the next, the software must also be fine-tuned at national and even local level. In Switzerland, mistakes are turned into data, and data into the next safety rule. Röthlisberger calls this a bottom-up culture that the country must protect. 

“Yes, mistakes will happen. We must be willing to take risks, and politics has to back us when we do.” — Jürg Röthlisberger

2. Subsidies stay, but they get smarter 

Public transport now relies heavily on subsidies covering up to 50% of operating costs in some region. Automation aims to shrink that figure, not remove it. Parliament is debating how to tie future funding to clear key performance indicators such as cost per passenger-kilometre and injury-crash rate. Röthlisberger’s message: if an AV line can prove efficiency and safety gains, continued support is money well spent. 

4. What Switzerland can do next 

• Champion a national “sandbox” where cantons test AV tariffs, stop-gap subsidies and data protocols with rapid feedback loops. 
• Publish a yearly risk report comparing pilot outcomes against the two value pillars: efficiency and safety. 
• Convene MPs, insurers and operators  to review results, keeping political support aligned with real-world evidence. 

Switzerland already delivers one of the world’s safest and most comfortable mobility systems; the challenge is to preserve that standard while curbing rising costs. Automated services can square the circle, extending high-quality coverage at a lower price per passenger-kilometre. That means moving quickly, so the savings arrive as soon as possible, but also planning far-sightedly, with clear metrics that keep safety and comfort exactly where Swiss travelers expect them to be. 

V. Collaboration: Switzerland’s “secret ingredient” 

Autonomous mobility is a global race, but Switzerland’s sharpest advantage is collaboration: the way industry, regulators, the Confederation and the cantons work as one team.  

Jeffrey Tumlin highlighted how unusual that is: 

“In the United States, we’ve really struggled… multiple institutions aren’t coordinating effectively, and they’re just not moving fast enough to keep up with the pace of industry innovation.” 

Switzerland’s model looks very different: 

• FEDRO–Cantons Monitoring Group (“Begleitgruppe”) : convened by the Federal Roads Office just weeks after the Ordinance on Automated Driving took effect. Cantonal engineers, police and federal experts swap road-level experience, review incoming permit requests and feed local insights into the first national safety directives now being drafted with the accident-prevention council (BFU). 

• Application-Process Working Group: a 25-member task-force led by SAAM and CertX. Its mission: convert the legal text into one harmonised application form that any operator can use. The group is tackling the most complex use case first (driverless Level-4 vehicles) and is building templates for safety, cyber-security and remote supervision. 

Röthlisberger summed up the formula: 

“Switzerland is a world champion in bottom-up initiatives. Cooperation between industry, government, politics, society and public-transport operators is strong here, and we must protect it.” 

Conclusion 

Switzerland does not need to reinvent its mobility culture to benefit from autonomous vehicles, it needs to extend it.  

The country already prizes safety, punctuality and public-private cooperation; those same values can steer the next wave of transport innovation. A clear federal rulebook (OAD), canton-level pragmatism, and an evidence mindset rooted in real-world pilots create the conditions to test boldly yet act responsibly. Early data show that driverless fleets can cut crashes, reduce operating costs and bridge the gaps between rail, bus and private car; provided regulators, operators and researchers keep learning together and keep the public informed.

The road ahead is therefore less about racing to “be first” and more about delivering measurable public value: fewer injuries, lower subsidies, and smoother door-to-door journeys. If Switzerland can demonstrate those gains at scale, it will not only meet its own mobility goals but also offer a proven template for other countries. SAAM’s mandate is to keep every mobility player in the same conversation and to safeguard Switzerland’s greatest asset: our unique collaborative approach. 

Watch the complete panel video

Follow us on LinkedIn to stay
up-to-date with SAAM news!