Uber on Thursday unveiled plans to unleash a fleet of driverless cars in Pittsburgh by the end of the month as the company prepares to launch the country’s first autonomous ride-sharing service.
The announcement was accompanied by confirmation of a $300 million deal with Swedish automotive giant Volvo, who in turn will provide Uber with 100 vehicles equipped with state-of-the-art sensors, camera lenses, lasers, radar and other technology by the end of the year, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
Together, the two titans hope to both change the current climate with respect to the budding ride-share industry while also making America’s roads safer than ever.
“Over one million people die in car accidents every year. These are tragedies that self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone. That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said in a statement.
Under the terms of the deal announced Thursday, Volvo will provide Uber with specially built Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles that will be able to navigate the City of Bridges without having a set of hands on the steering wheel. The fleet will be supervised for starters by putting actual humans in the driver’s seat while the project gets rolling, but eventually Uber hopes it will be able to dispatch fully autonomous cars by 2021.
Raffi Krikorian, the director of engineering at Uber, said that “the goal is to wean us off of having drivers in the car, so we don’t want the public talking to our safety drivers,” Bloomberg reported.
Once launched, Uber customers who order rides from the company’s smartphone app within Pittsburgh will be randomly matched with driverless vehicles as they’re available. The trips will be free at first, and Mr. Kalanick told Bloomberg that he expects prices will eventually be so law that ordering an autonomous car will cost less than a private vehicle.
“That could be seen as a threat,” added Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson. “We see it as an opportunity.”
In the meantime, Uber plans put a fleet of self-driving Ford Fusions on the streets of Pittsburgh within a matter of weeks, the likes of which will be joined by the specially designed Volvos down the road, The Associated Press said Thursday.
Although Ford has previously researched autonomous vehicles independently of Uber, “no automotive or technology company has yet achieved” the public launching of an autonomous ride-share service, Bloomberg reported.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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