Nissan and tech firm DeNA are to trial a new autonomous taxi service from next month with a view to launching the service from the early 2020s.

The autonomous taxis will run along a set route.

Dubbed Easy Ride, the service will be piloted in the Minatomirai district of Yokohama, in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture, using vehicles with autonomous driving technology along a set route between Nissan’s global headquarters and the Yokohama World Porters shopping centre.

Overseen by a remote monitoring centre, the pilot will also provide a concierge service of recommended destinations and will capture survey results on participants’ preferred pricing for the scheme.

Nissan and DeNA will also explore the development of service designs for driverless environments, expanded service routes, vehicle distribution logic, pick-up/drop-off processes and multilingual support. The companies aim to launch Easy Ride in a limited environment at first, and then introduce a full service in the early 2020s.