In another deal, the company announced a $300 million alliance with Volvo to supply vehicles and technology.
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Unot auspicious day for Uber.
The Volvo-Uber project marks a significant step in the automotive business with a auto manufacturer joining forces with a new Silicon Valley-based entrant to the vehicle industry, underlining the way in which the global automotive industry is evolving in response to the advent of new technologies.
The real breakthrough for autonomous cars, Walker Smith said, will be when a company puts one on public roads without a backup human.
“We are going commercial”, Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg. “More than one million people die in auto accidents every year”.
Uber and Volvo just announced a partnership to develop a completely autonomous vehicle by 2021, but it’s not clear when they plan to roll out a driverless ride-hailing service. These are tragedies that autonomous driving technologies can help avoid, but we cannot do it alone. That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important.
Otto was founded six months ago by former key Google employees who worked on the search company’s self-driving vehicle program.
The rides, which come with a human backup driver to handle situations that the autonomous cars haven’t seen, will be free to those willing to take part, the company said.
And on Thursday, the company said a test the service would begin in the next two weeks and that there would be in the vehicle co-pilot who will not lead but the monitor operations.
Amounting remained secret, Uber swallowed Otto, a startup after Silicon Valley.
That includes personal transportation such as ride-hailing services, as well as delivery services and trucking, Kalanick said.
Until the start of this year, Levandowski was at Google, but he left to found Otto with two other former Google employees. We are very proud to be the partner of choice for Uber, one of the world’s leading technology companies.
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Uber-branded test cars have been on Pittsburgh roads for several months. It turns out that Volvo, and not Tesla, will be working with Uber on autonomous vehicles.
