Volvo Cars and Uber join forces to develop autonomous driving cars Volvo Cars and Uber join forces to develop autonomous driving cars
San Francisco, California - Uber has bought self-driving truck company Otto and formed a $300 million (R4 billion) alliance with Volvo to develop autonomous cars.
The moves reflect its eagerness to push self-driving technology, which could in time reduce its biggest cost, paying drivers, and put it in a position to expand into the trucking industry.
Ride-sharing companies are forming alliances with big carmakers - such as General Motors Co and ride-hailing service Lyft - to accelerate these efforts, which depend on software and hardware working together to give the vehicle the right reflexes in traffic.
Uber boss Travis Kalanick wrote in a blogpost: “Partnership is crucial to our self-driving strategy because Uber has no experience making cars - and to do that well is incredibly hard, as I realised on my first visit to a car plant several years ago.”
Otto is a start-up company less than a year old with fewer than 100 employees; Anthony Levandowski, one of its four co-founders - all of them ex-Google - will lead Uber's self-driving efforts in San Francisco, Palo Alto and Pittsburgh, including personal transportation such as ride-hailing services, as well as delivery services and trucking.
Uber, which has a research centre in Pittsburgh, will begin a pilot program by the end of August in which trusted Uber customers will be able to use their phones to summon a self-driving car for use in a downtown Pittsburgh.
It will be the first time members of the public will be able to use self-driving vehicles, although a driver trained to handle the autonomous cars will be behind the wheel to step in if needed.
Volvo deal focuses on the XC90
The Uber-Volvo partnership will allow them to pool resources into initially developing the autonomous driving capabilities of Volvo's flagship XC90 SUV model.
There was no timeline given for the alliance, but the goal is reportedly to develop a fully self-driving car by 2021, and that Uber, which does not plan to make its own cars, will align with other automakers over time.
Uber will buy Volvos and then install its own driverless control system. Some of the Volvos will join a handful of Ford Fusion sedans that will be used to start the pilot program in downtown Pittsburgh.
So far Otto has tested self-driving trucks for highway use only, but developers hope the new technology will enable trucks to drive around the clock, leaving humans to rest, do paperwork and take the controls only while going on and off highways.
Reuters
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