In an interview with Bloomberg about the new fleet of cars, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that the need for the company to develop its own self-driving fleet became apparent when Uber realized Google was planning to get into the ride-sharing business down the line. This acquisition and alliance is a clear indication of Uber’s aim to have self-driving vehicles picking up and dropping customers around the world.
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The Uber-prepped XC90s will be used as self-driving taxis to ferry customers around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Levandowski will lead “combined self-driving efforts reporting directly to me – across personal transportation, delivery and trucking”, Kalanick said, noting that “when it comes to this advanced technology stack, Otto plus Uber is a dream team” and that “we now have one of the strongest autonomous engineering groups in the world”.
Holding up its end of the pact, Volvo Cars has reportedly so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year, with the project allocated an estimated $300 million. The city also gets a fair amount of snow, which can cover lane lines and trick autonomous vehicle sensors. The vehicles will be incorporated by Uber into their own self-developed driving system with Volvo as the transport company’s technical partner.
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Use of the backup drivers is also an acknowledgment that current autonomous driving systems can not handle the wide range of unpredictable circumstances on public roads. During the test run, two Uber employees will be in the front seats to serve as an emergency backup, and will take over the steering wheel if necessary. “It will take a decade of testing before an 18-year-old can get in the auto and tell it where to go”. That’s very different from the relative chaos of even a small downtown, much less a big city where drivers don’t always follow the rules of the road. But he thinks they will all adopt the same risk-management approach as Uber. Volvo will develop base vehicles for research and both companies will design autonomous vehicles on their own.
