Futamatagawa–Sakonyama Autonomous Bus Trial
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
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✎ Updated 20 Aug 2026 Publication date recorded for 2 sources. What changed →
The City of Yokohama, Sotetsu Bus and A-Drive ran an autonomous electric bus between Futamatagawa station and the Sakonyama housing estate from 20 January to 19 February 2026, on advance booking and alongside the normal timetable. The vehicle is a TIER IV Minibus 2.0 with a top speed of 35km/h that locates itself by matching onboard sensor data against a map of the route. A driver sits at the wheel and intervenes when needed: the operator describes it as autonomous driving level 2. The trial is funded by a transport ministry subsidy aimed explicitly at the shortage of bus drivers.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →🎓 Lesson
This is what autonomy is actually being bought for in an ageing suburb: not to remove the driver but to keep a route that would otherwise close for want of one — and the trial still needs a driver to run.
Sources
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 5 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 5 addressable claims, 2 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 5
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-8d4c87b029ef04ec
quantitative
from 20 January to 19 February 2026, on advance booking and alongside the normal timetable
Sources carrying this claim
clm-0b7124889f65988e
quantitative
a TIER IV Minibus 2.0 with a top speed of 35km/h
Sources carrying this claim
clm-6d6a120194ed130b
quantitative
A driver sits at the wheel and intervenes when needed: the operator describes it as autonomous driving level 2
Sources carrying this claim
clm-8a75bb97dbef169a
descriptive
locates itself by matching onboard sensor data against a map of the route
Sources carrying this claim
clm-0baa0444635cf38b
descriptive
funded by a transport ministry subsidy aimed explicitly at the shortage of bus drivers
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:c4a7cea85d76547f52a3b3aac0ff5853d5d8a8b76e85fff31302444cdd13a16f
- 5
- of 5 claims mapped
- 2
- source dossiers
- 1
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Sotetsu Bus and A-Drive with the City of Yokohama
- Actor types
- city-government, private, national-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism subsidy for regional public transport and autonomous-vehicle deployment
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
2 source dossiers
City of Yokohama — autonomous EV bus demonstration, Futamatagawa to Sakonyama
- Stable source ID
src-5780d6b091081045- Publisher
- Name not classified · city.yokohama.lg.jp
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- No locator recordedDescriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
- Claims linked
Town News — autonomous bus between Futamatagawa station and Sakonyama (22 January 2026)
- Stable source ID
src-bde8a2084f689694- Publisher
- Name not classified · townnews.co.jp
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2026-01-22
- Updated
- 2026-02-13
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-18
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-20
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- No locator recordedDescriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Futamatagawa–Sakonyama Autonomous Bus Trial” — Yokohama, Japan. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/yokohama-sotetsu-autonomous-bus/ (last verified 2026-08-18). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.