Uber
- Uber revealed its newest self-driving car at its annual Elevate Summit on Wednesday.
- The newest vehicle, a Volvo XC90 SUV, was made in partnership with Volvo and is designed for fully autonomous use without the need for a human safety driver behind the wheel.
- The new self-driving car will reportedly be introduced to Uber’s autonomous fleet in 2020 for on-road testing.
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Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group unveiled its latest self-driving car, a Volvo SUV that’s designed to be fully driverless.
The self-driving Volvo XC90 SUV, announced at the Uber Elevate Summit on Wednesday, will be the first Uber autonomous car designed to drive itself without the need for a human "mission specialist" driver behind the wheel, TechCrunch reports. The vehicle was made as part of Uber’s ongoing partnership with Volvo.
The car’s self-driving system can enable "the possible future deployment of self-driving cars in Uber’s network as an autonomous ridesharing service," Uber said in its news release. The vehicle will be equipped with computer-controlled steering and breaking systems, as well as back-up systems and back-up battery power. The back-up systems will bring the car to a full stop if any of the primary systems were to fail.
"What it looks like from the outside isn’t much different, but what’s going on inside enables us to run our full autonomy system — things like 360 degrees of camera coverage, 360 degrees of Lidar and radar," Uber ATG CEO Eric Meyhofer said at the Elevate Summit. "These give the vehicle everything it needs in order to operate autonomously."
Uber says that this new generation of self-driving cars will be introduced to Uber’s existing on-road fleet "in higher quantities" in 2020.
However, Uber’s self-driving cars are currently only being tested on public roads in Pittsburgh. Uber’s testing program was suspended in early 2018 following a deadly accident in Arizona involving one of its self-driving cars.
Volvo and Uber have partnered since September 2016 on self-driving technology. Volvo signed a "framework agreement" in 2017 to sell Uber "tens of thousands" of self-driving cars between 2019 and 2021.
See Also:
- Uber says it will deliver McDonald’s meals via drones in San Diego as soon as this year
- Uber’s first passenger drone is a helicopter-plane hybrid that can carry passengers across cities at 150 mph
- Apple is reportedly trying to buy the self-driving startup Drive.ai to help it take on rivals like Waymo and Tesla in robo-taxis
Source: Business Insider – pleskin@businessinsider.com (Paige Leskin)