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Is Uber looking to Waymo to get it back on the road to self-driving cars?
After one of Uber's self-driving cars was involved in a fatal crash with a pedestrian in Arizona in April, the ride-hailing service temporarily halted its self-driving operations in all cities where it's been testing its vehicles.
Now Khosrowshahi says he's looking to an industry rival to get Uber's program back on the road by this summer.
"When we get back on the road, we have to be absolutely satisfied we're getting back on the road it in the safest manner possible," Khosrowshahi said Wednesday during an on-stage interview at Recode's Code Conference, which is being held this week in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. 'We're having conversations with Waymo about putting their cars on our network. If something happens, great. If not, we can live with that, too."
"I'd welcome Waymo to put cars in our network," he said, calling the company an "incredible technology provider."
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Friday June 01 2018, @03:51PM (1 child)
Uber already has name recognition and infrastructure for the taxi market segment. Self driving cars are so expensive that they will be targeting taxi applications to keep the cars on the road more hours a day, so Uber does have something to provide Waymo.
If Waymo had a product ready to sell they could avoid the partnership and just sell/lease vehicles to Uber. However currently one of the difficulties is just getting miles of experience, so perhaps a partnership isn't too bad: Waymo could start testing with real Uber clients and gain experience from those deliveries.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 01 2018, @04:25PM
Waymo would have to scale out their business in any Uber partnership.
If doing so, Waymo might find it to be advantageous to do so under their own name. In their own vehicles. With their own app to page the service.
The difficulty is all on Waymo, not Uber. Waymo has to continue to improve their technology. Waymo has to carefully put this into locations that are well mapped and that their service can be adapted for.
It seems all Uber does is provide a tainted brand name. Is there more that I don't understand?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.