Uber adding 24,000 self-driving Volvos
Uber has agreed to buy 24,000 SUVs from Volvo to form a fleet of driverless vehicles, a signal that the company remains committed to autonomous cars under newly appointed chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi.
The XC90s, priced from US$46,900, will be delivered from 2019 to 2021 in the first commercial purchase by a ridehailing provider, Volvo said in a statement. Uber will add its own sensors and software to permit pilotless driving.
Uber’s order steps up efforts to replace human drivers, the biggest cost in its on-demand taxi service. The autonomous fleet is small compared with the more than two million people who drive for Uber but reflects dedication to the company’s strategy of developing self-driving cars.
Last year, Uber agreed to use 100 XC90s for self-driving tests in Pittsburgh and later struck a deal to include autonomous vehicles from Mercedes-Benz in its network at some point. But the status of the project was unclear after Waymo sued Uber this year, claiming the ride-hailing company stole trade secrets, and the U.S. Justice Department opened an inquiry into the matter.
Uber has said it didn’t use stolen information. Shortly before taking over as chief executive in September, Khosrowshahi said Uber must focus on the core business, which raised questions about the future of the costly self-driving program.
“This new agreement puts us on a path toward mass-produced, self-driving vehicles at scale,” Jeff Miller, Uber’s head of auto alliances, told Bloomberg.
“The more people working on the problem, we’ll get there faster and with better, safer, more reliable systems.”