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Uber to introduce first self-driving cars in Pittsburgh this month

Uber will by the end of this month begin a pilot program in which trusted Uber customers will be able to use their phones to summon a self-driving auto for use in downtown Pittsburgh, Reuters cited a source as saying.

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Sweden’s Volvo Cars, a subsidiary of China’s Geely, has just announced it will partner with Uber to produce a fleet of autonomous ride-sharing vehicles.

Although engineers from both companies will work together on the project, Volvo and Uber add their own self-driving systems and software on top of the jointly developed base vehicles.

The deal with Volvo and the acquisition of Otto are the two latest indications of Uber’s apparent ambitions for self-driving vehicles, for providing ride-hailing services to consumers as well as businesses.

“The alliance marks the beginning of what both companies view as a longer term industrial partnership”, said a Volvo press release.

CEO Travis Kalanick says cutting the driver out of the equation could potentially make the service much cheaper for riders – possibly even cheaper than a private vehicle.

With Uber starting to roll out its first self-driving auto fleet in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh this month – with human supervision – its decision to also purchase a self-driving truck start-up is perhaps unsurprising. “We’re catching up fast, but we need to get to No. 1 quick”, he said.

Volvo Cars, which was acquired by Chinese automaker Geely in 2010, employs almost 29,000 people worldwide.

The new base vehicle will be developed on Volvo’s fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA).

Interestingly, Kalanick bought Otto for its technology and not for its self-driving trucks.

The new base version auto will be developed by Volvo on its, Scalable Product Architecture.

The fleet consists of a modified version of a Volvo XC90.

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The initial test phase will take place in Pittsburgh later in August where Uber users will be able to hail one of these self-driving cars.

Bloomberg