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posted by janrinok on Monday November 20 2017, @08:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the charging-ahead dept.

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


Original Submission

Related Stories

Uber Testing Driverless Car in Pittsburgh 18 comments

Uber is testing a driverless Ford Fusion on the streets on Pittsburgh in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. It's all part of a plan to liberate itself of the drivers/contractors/employees/meatparts it currently depends on:

Uber's big inconvenience is the fact it needs drivers, and so this line of research is about eliminating that final piece of the puzzle to boost profits even more. Uber isn't alone - rival ride-sharing service Lyft announced a tie-up with Chevrolet to use autonomous driving as well, but it's Uber that seems unstoppable in its goal to be the dominant force in global ground travel.

Uber said in its statement that real-world testing was "critical to our efforts to develop self-driving technology", and explained a trained driver was still monitoring operations in the car at all times. The company has also recently joined a coalition with Google and several car makers to help steer the regulations needed to make self-drive cars a reality. Together with Ford, Volvo and Lyft, they aim to lobby lawmakers and regulators on some of the legal barriers that would need to be changed before driverless cars could hit the roads.

Statement on Uber's website.


Original Submission

Uber to Begin Picking Up Passengers With Autonomous Cars Next Month 13 comments

Uber will pick up ride-hailing passengers with autonomous cars in a test beginning in Pittsburgh next month. Pittsburgh is the home of Carnegie Mellon University:

Starting later this month, Uber will allow customers in downtown Pittsburgh to summon self-driving cars from their phones, crossing an important milestone that no automotive or technology company has yet achieved. Google, widely regarded as the leader in the field, has been testing its fleet for several years, and Tesla Motors offers Autopilot, essentially a souped-up cruise control that drives the car on the highway. Earlier this week, Ford announced plans for an autonomous ride-sharing service. But none of these companies has yet brought a self-driving car-sharing service to market.

Uber's Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver's seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers. Volvo Cars has so far delivered a handful of vehicles out of a total of 100 due by the end of the year. The two companies signed a pact earlier this year to spend $300 million to develop a fully autonomous car that will be ready for the road by 2021.

Uber also acquired self-driving truck startup Otto.

It is not clear whether Uber users will be able to opt out of getting the surprise autonomous Volvo SUVs sent to them (due to privacy or safety concerns), but rides in the autonomous cars will be free during the Pittsburgh test.

Also at NYT, WSJ, TechCrunch, and The Verge.

Previously: Uber Testing Driverless Car in Pittsburgh


Original Submission

Uber's Self-Driving Cars to be Tested in San Francisco 15 comments

According to c|net, Uber is preparing to launch self-driving cars in San Francisco, as it has done in Pittsburgh:

Uber's self-driving cars, accompanied by a human driver, have been traveling on the streets of San Francisco for the last three to four months. The company has said the cars are being used solely to collect data for maps. Mapping streets is part of readying autonomous vehicles for the open road, so they can identify routes and learn to detect obstacles.

Uber isn't saying when it's going to roll out its self-driving cars to passengers in San Francisco. The company declined to comment for this story. But CNET has learned that Uber will officially launch the program on Wednesday; we also learned that Uber worked in partnership with Volvo to develop the self-driving cars.

As of September, Uber didn't have a permit to run autonomous cars in California. It's unclear if the Department of Motor Vehicles has since given the company a permit. The DMV didn't return requests for comment.

So far, Uber's self-driving cars are available in only one US city -- Pittsburgh. After 18 months of testing, the company launched a small fleet of autonomous vehicles in September in the city. Now when riders hail an Uber there, they have a chance of being picked up in a self-driving car that's accompanied by a "safety driver." Uber said it plans to have 100 self-driving cars in Pittsburgh by the end of the year.

Also at The Verge .


Original Submission

SoftBank Devalues Uber by 30% With Latest Offer 5 comments

SoftBank thinks Uber is valued over $20 billion too high, although other investors may disagree:

SoftBank is preparing to buy shares of Uber at a price that values Uber at only $48 billion, a steep 30 percent discount rate for ownership in the company, which was last valued at almost $70 billion.

That's in line with what Uber investors were expecting; Recode reported this weekend that the price could be as low as $48 billion or as high as $52 billion. The $48 billion price, confirmed by a person with knowledge of the figure, will however raise concerns about whether the secondary sale will succeed — SoftBank needs to accumulate 14 percent of the company's shares to trigger the so-called "tender offer."

Also at Bloomberg and TechCrunch.

Previously: Alphabet Leads $1 Billion Round of Investment in Lyft
SoftBank to Invest Billions in Uber
Uber to Purchase 24,000 Volvo SUVs for Autonomous Vehicle Fleet
SoftBank Knew of Data Breach at Uber


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by meustrus on Monday November 20 2017, @09:09PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday November 20 2017, @09:09PM (#599403)

    Obligatory [xkcd.com]

    --
    If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @10:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 20 2017, @10:21PM (#599422)

    Until then, it's just following the standard business model of Uber: cheap publicity stunts to make idiot investors give them more money.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday November 20 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday November 20 2017, @10:30PM (#599425)

    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

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday November 21 2017, @12:09AM (#599447) Journal

      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

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday November 21 2017, @04:00AM (#599524) Homepage

      Here in America, at least, Volvos have a reputation for having the best safety*, and Uber's passengers are going to need it!

      They're also a bitch to work on.

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