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SEARCHVolvo and Uber have formed a $300-million partnership in which the Swedish automaker will supply fully autonomous vehicles to Uber for use by the ride-sharing service by 2021.
Photo courtesy of Volvo.
Photo courtesy of Volvo.
Volvo and Uber have formed a $300-million partnership in which the Swedish automaker will supply fully autonomous vehicles to Uber for use by the ride-sharing service by 2021.
Volvo will also supply modified XC90 SUVs for use in Pittsburgh later this month, reports Bloomberg. Uber will allow customers summon the self-driving cars from their mobile phones.
The joint project will focus on the development of new base vehicles using the latest autonomous driving technologies, including driverless cars, Volvo announced. Volvo Cars will manufacture the base vehicles for purchase by Uber. Volvo and Uber are contributing a combined $300 million to the project.
“Both Uber and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of their own autonomous car strategies,” according to a Volvo statement. “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 fully autonomous driving.”
The new base vehicle will be developed on Volvo Cars’ Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), currently used on Volvo’s XC90, S90, and V90.
Volvo Cars and Uber engineers will work closely together on project development, extending the scalability of the SPA platform to include all needed safety, redundancy, and new features required for autonomous vehicles, according to Volvo.
In related news, Uber announced it has acquired Otto, a driverless-truck startup founded earlier this year.
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