The agreement between the companies Uber and Volvo about a major purchase of unmanned vehicles was concluded in 2016. And it seems that the “major purchase” will be really serious because we are talking about the purchase of 24 thousand drones XC90 SUV for use as a taxi. This automaker Volvo officially announced yesterday. Characteristically, initially, the cars will not be equipped with an autopilot and all the necessary equipment. All of these features will be implemented directly by staff of Uber in the future.
People have always been an important part of the strategy Uber when it was about the taxi drivers. But the company has never hesitated to voice their plans that one day she plans to move to a fully Autonomous model control of their vehicles. If there is no driver, it is not necessary to pay a salary, no need to worry that he will get sick and not come to work or be rude to the passenger. In this respect, Uber can be understood: business is business, it needs to bring in more money and less of a headache to management.
The deal with Volvo will be the first step to realization of the futuristic plans of the company. It may well be that after the taxi-drones we’ll finally see and flying taxis, which Uber is threatening to launch into the air over major US cities in the coming years. The company is now a lot of problems, one of which is a lawsuit from Waymo, claiming that Uber stole important technology secrets to develop their own autopilot system. Of course, Uber denies theft technology, but the court will show who was right and who was to blame.
With the first small test batch of the Volvo XC90 SUV at Uber also faced some difficulties. No, not with the transformation of cars to drones, and their legal registration on the territory of the United States. The California Department of transportation stated that the vehicles were transported to the United States illegally and he just cannot issue the registration documents for the vehicles. Uber leadership had to work hard to resolve this issue in the shortest possible time. Let’s see whether there will be something similar when transporting to another 24,000 cars. It is not excluded that in the future Uber will acquire a large batch of cars and other large manufacturers.
Uber buys 24 000 Volvo XC90 to turn them into a driverless taxi
Sergey Grey