At MOVE 2026, MOVEmnt.net caught up with Vivetha Natterjee, Head of Autonomous Product and Deployment for Autonomous Vehicles at Bolt.
Following her heavily attended morning presentation, we sat down to discuss the major developments taking place in the world of driverless scaling and Bolt’s upcoming plan to launch operational autonomous vehicle services across five distinct European markets within the next year.
Vivetha shares her insights on the long-term reality of autonomous mobility, highlighting that vehicle bodies and software stacks will eventually shift into mere commodities. Instead of hyper-focusing purely on hardware, she argues that the future of driverless transport relies entirely on safe, insurable, and localized fleet operations that directly target driver shortages and municipal safety issues.
“If you see it from that perspective 5 to 10 years down the line, the software and the vehicle is going to become a commodity. What’s more critical is the operations—that’s what will scale.”
We continue our fascinating discussion by unpacking some of the key challenges facing widespread autonomous adoption, including fractured European regulatory frameworks, lengthy data-validation processes, and the puzzle of earning public trust. Vivetha sheds light on the important symbiosis between automated tech and community trust, explaining that initial robotaxi deployments act as the primary, real-world educational exposure required to acclimate everyday citizens to driverless technology.
To bridge the gap between scepticism and safety, Bolt is actively prioritizing collaborative dialogue with town officials and transport ministers to tailor deployments to localized city pain points. Rather than cannibalizing public transit networks, Vivetha emphasizes that Bolt’s long-term autonomous goal is to challenge the costly necessity of multiple private household vehicles, paving the way for a seamlessly blended, shared-mobility future.
Watch the full interview below to hear Vivetha’s take on agentic AI, physical AI, regulation and more.
