The announcements may push it ahead of its prime competitor, Lyft, which earlier this year took a $500 million investment from General Motors.
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Google’s autonomous auto has also had a few accidents, but none of them were serious – likely because the vehicle is capped at 25 miles per hour. The Volvo SUVs will be part of Uber’s self-driving fleet of taxis in Pittsburgh.
Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars, said in a statement: “Volvo is a world leader in the development of active safety and autonomous drive technology and possesses an unrivaled safety credibility”. Uber will also be using some self-driving Ford Fusions, which they’ve used previously to map the city.
The ride-sharing firm Uber will, for the first time, allow users to hail self-driving cars within a fortnight, the company has confirmed. Uber recently complicated that deal by selling its China business to Didi in exchange for an 18-percent stake in the Chinese company.
This will involve Uber adding its own self-developed autonomous driving systems to the Volvo base vehicle. But its CEO, Travis Kalanick, has said that without drivers, the cost of hailing a ride will be cheaper than owning a auto. Advocates say they’ll eventually save lives by eliminating human error, but both Google and Tesla autonomous vehicles have had accidents.
The company’s still legally required to put a human supervisor in the driver’s seat, and an audio warning will go off whenever they need to take the wheel. Audi, BMW and Mercedes say precise maps are a key to developing autonomous cars as well as advanced driver assistance features.
In another deal, the company announced a $300 million alliance with Volvo to supply vehicles and technology.
Ride-hailing network Uber reports that it has acquired Otto, a 90-plus person technology startup from former Google execs that has so far focused exclusively on the concept of self-driving trucks.
With the acquisition of Otto, Uber gets a fast infusion of self-driving expertise, including Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, one of the founding fathers of autonomous technology.
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Until the start of this year, Levandowski was at Google, but he left to found Otto with two other former Google employees.
