In a move to expand from the ride-sharing market to commercial road transport, Uber has acquired U.S. start-up Otto.
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The world’s largest ridesharing service today announced that it’s teaming up with Volvo on a new $300 million joint venture aimed at developing self-driving cars. And it said it bought a start-up that’s working on self-driving trucks.
“That is not a situation where the tech is going to be evenly distributed”, said Holden of self-driving auto technology.
In a few weeks, Uber will start using self-driving cars to carry passengers in Pittsburgh, raising the stakes in the fast-track race to deploy autonomous vehicles.
Further, Kalanick argues, the rise of autonomous cars will open new jobs like maintaining the vehicle fleets, jobs that don’t exist today because there has never been a need. Uber is aiming to place 100 self-driving cars in the city for use by Uber customers, although it’s important to note that for right now, the driverless cars will contain drivers who are prepared to take over in case that anything goes wrong, as well as co-pilots who will monitor and observe the vehicle. The company was recently illustrated by the announcement of an autonomous driving system for trucks only.
Driverless rides will be free at first. Uber’s news comes just days after Ford held a press conference at its R&D facility in Palo Alto to announce its intention to build fully autonomous cars by 2021, using a growing fleet of Ford Fusion Hybrids as test mules.
“That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important”, he added. GM also bought itself some self-driving expertise in March with the acquisition of a company called Cruise Automation.
Uber’s moves reflect its eagerness to advance self-driving technology.
Uber is doing a trial run of self-driving cars later this month and Volvo has announced its partnership with Uber to use their autonomous vehicles. Volvo will develop base vehicles for research and both companies will design autonomous vehicles on their own.
Uber will soon make self-driving cars available to riders in Pittsburgh, in the first time such technology is being offered to the public.
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Pennsylvania, he said, has no laws governing autonomous cars and how they relate to ride-hailing, but local laws may require a driver behind the wheel. These are tragedies that self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone. First it was Google, then it was Tesla and then several other companies, all vying to get the first flawless self-driving vehicle onto the roads. It was the first recorded fatal accident involving a self-driving auto.
