Uber has launched a pilot autonomous-car project in Pittsburgh with four self-driving Ford Fusions answering calls for ride service.
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Uber on Tuesday started allowing users of its popular ride-sharing service to hail rides from its autonomous prototypes now testing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The mobile app-based taxi service said it has “safety drivers” in the front seats of the cars because they could require human intervention in many conditions, such as bad weather.
Uber has begun offering customers the chance to ride in one of its autonomous auto prototypes. Indeed, Uber is partnered with Volvo for the Pittsburgh trial too, with autonomous XC90s to be added after the initial roll-out of a “handful of Ford Fusions”.
Since opening its Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh previous year, San Francisco-based Uber has hired away 40 faculty members and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and formed partnerships with Volvo, according to Reuters. “We think it can help with congestion and can make transportation cheaper and more accessible for the vast majority of people”.
One engineer said that the challenge was a good thing.
Some experts wonder if Uber drivers eventually will become obsolete in a world of self-driving vehicles.
The company is also amongst those who would stand to directly benefit from self-driving technology, which could in theory allow it to employ fewer drivers.
“We actually think of Pittsburgh as the double black diamond of driving”, Mr Krikorian said.
“It scares me not to have a driver there with an Uber”, said Claudia Tyler, a health executive standing near the entrance of an office in downtown Pittsburgh. “If we can prove we can do this in Pittsburgh, then we can prove we can do it anywhere”, according to Peduto.
Uber said it now has a fleet of more than a dozen self-driving cars and plans to have several score on Pittsburgh’s roads by the end of this year. Drivers will occasionally need to take over and drive the auto manually.
A journalist gets in a self driving Uber for a ride during a media preview at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.
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Uber is hoping to reduce fears about the impact of driverless cars on society through this type of testing as well.
