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Uber plans to purchase 24,000 Volvo XC90 SUVs between 2019 and 2021. The number is set to change:
Uber has entered into an agreement with carmaker Volvo to purchase 24,000 of its XC90 SUVs between 2019 and 2021 to form a fleet of autonomous vehicles, according to Bloomberg News. The XC90 is the base of Uber's latest-generation self-driving test car, which features sensors and autonomous driving computing capability installed by Uber after purchase on the XC90 vehicle.
The deal is said to be worth around $1.4 billion, per the Financial Times, with the XC90 starting at $46,900 in the U.S. in terms of base model consumer pricing. Uber is already testing the XC90 in Arizona, San Francisco and Pittsburgh in trials with safety drivers on board to help refine and improve their software. Uber also paired up with Volvo to jointly develop autonomous driving and a vehicle ready for self-driving implementation, with investment from both sides committed last year.
Also at NYT.
Previously: Uber Testing Driverless Car in Pittsburgh
Uber to Begin Picking Up Passengers With Autonomous Cars Next Month
Uber's Self-Driving Cars to be Tested in San Francisco
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 20 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)
According to Wiki, those are made in Sweden and Malaysia.
Also, that puts the price tag of the fleet to about $2B, after equipping them. For 24000 cars. Each time someone mentions a wonderful full-auto future of no car ownership, they forget that quite a few companies would have to spend trillions first.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday November 21 2017, @12:09AM
https://therideshareguy.com/how-many-uber-drivers-are-there/ [therideshareguy.com]
http://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/ [businessofapps.com]
Let's say that Uber currently has a solid 1 million drivers in the U.S. That could be an overestimate.
Let's say that to get 1 million autonomous vehicles, it would cost them around $85 billion.
There are apparently around 263.5 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. Replacing all of those could cost around $22 trillion. Though the cost could be reduced if existing cars can be retrofitted for a few thousand dollars each. But there doesn't need to be an immediate replacement of all passenger vehicles. Even people who own cars have been Uber passengers for various reasons (drunkenness, traveling to another city, etc.). If we just focus on "sharing economy" and "ridehailing" vehicles, the price tag will be well under $1 trillion. Google seems to want to muscle into that territory with Waymo, and there is also Lyft. All of the companies involved are partnering with auto manufacturers, and could set up joint ventures that funnel some profits to the auto manufacturers in exchange for getting some of the cars on the road for cheap. In the initial years we will see a mix of autonomous and human ridehailing drivers in places like Pittsburgh or Silicon Valley, eventually expanding to major cities. If the operating costs for driverless are nice and low, more human drivers could be replaced each year.
In passenger land, semi-autonomous features are already being sold [caranddriver.com]. These features will begin trickling down into more new vehicles, until ordinary consumers can purchase level 3-4 autonomous cars [wikipedia.org]. Trillions of dollars of business will be done between consumers and auto manufacturers.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday November 21 2017, @04:00AM
Here in America, at least, Volvos have a reputation for having the best safety*, and Uber's passengers are going to need it!