Uber to use Volvo Cars for autonomous driving
Volvo is Uber’s partner of choice in a plan to develop autonomous driving cars for the world’s leading ride hailing app. They’ll be joining forces to develop new base vehicles that will be able to incorporate the latest developments in Autonomous Driving technologies up to and including fully autonomous driverless cars.
The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then purchased from Volvo by Uber. In a statement by Volvo it was mentioned that Volvo Cars and Uber are contributing a combined USD 300-million towards the project.
“Both Uber and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of their own autonomous car strategies. This will involve Uber adding its own self-developed autonomous driving systems to the Volvo base vehicle. Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of its own autonomous car strategy, which will involve full autonomous driving,” says Media Relations Manager, Brent Ellis.
They’re calling it the Volvo-Uber project and the alliance marks the beginning of what both companies view as a longer-term industrial partnership.
Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief of Volvo Cars, says: “Volvo is one of the most progressive and contemporary car makers in the world. It is a world leader in the development of active safety credibility. We are very proud to be the partner of choice for Uber, one of the world’s leading technology companies. This alliance places Volvo at the heart of the current technological revolution in the automotive industry.”
The new base vehicle is to be developed by one of the most advanced car architectures in the world, Volvo Cars’ fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), which is currently used on Volvo Cars’ top-of-the-line multiple award winning XC90 SUV, among other Volvo models.
The development work will be conducted by Volvo Cars engineers and Uber engineers in close collaboration. This project will further add to the scalability of the SPA platform to include all needed safety, redundancy and new features required to have autonomous vehicles on the road.
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, comments: “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. Volvo is a leader in vehicle development and best-in-class when it comes to safety. By combining the capabilities of Uber and Volvo we will get to the future faster, together.”
Via Volvo Cars