Uber buys tens of thousands of self-driving cars from Volvo

Spread the love

Uber has signed an agreement with car manufacturer Volvo to supply tens of thousands of self-driving cars. It concerns SUVs of the XC90 type, with which Uber has been conducting tests for some time.

Under the deal, Uber would buy up to 24,000 units of Volvo’s self-driving car, Bloomberg reported. Volvo only reports that it concerns tens of thousands of copies of the XC90. The cars will be delivered between 2019 and 2021.

After the cars are delivered, Uber attaches its own sensors and technology to the vehicles, including proprietary software. This should make it possible to drive the car completely autonomously, without a human driver sitting behind the wheel. Previous Uber XC90s still required a human driver, due to the lack of backup systems for braking and steering.

If 24,000 copies of the car are actually purchased, it will likely cost Uber more than a billion dollars, as an XC90 costs at least $47,000 in the US. According to Jeff Miller of Uber, this agreement will significantly scale up the mass production of autonomous driving cars.

Uber has been testing the self-driving variant of the XC90 SUV for some time in the United States. In California, the registration of the test vehicles was previously revoked because the company had not applied for a permit. In February, Uber was able to go to the state of Arizona for the tests. All rides were conducted with two Uber engineers in the front seats of the self-driving cars, in case human intervention was necessary.

During tests in the American city of Pittsburgh earlier this year, it appeared that the Ford Fusion test vehicles used there were far from being able to drive fully autonomously; per mile traveled, the human driver had to intervene at least once. During previous testing in San Francisco, an XC90 ran through a red traffic light and is said to have lurched another at an intersection.

You might also like