Uber is finally ready to put its driverless cars out of the test phase and make it available to customers. According to Bloomberg, Pittsburgh residents will be the first ones to take advantage of this service by the end of this month, absolutely free.
Pittsburgh has not really been chosen at random. The city has served as the test ground for the company’s self-driving car initiative. Experts of the autonomous industry are also based in this city, which is the basic reason CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick of the ride-hailing company opened its Advanced Technologies Center here.
Self-driving is gaining traction, as giants from auto and tech industry, such as Ford, Google, have been vigorously working on making this technology available for the general public. Uber joined the autonomous brigade a little later than the others, but it looks like the company has managed to be the first one to publicly launch driverless cars.
Committed to the idea of replacing “human drivers with robots,” the company collaborated with a couple of renowned car makers, and hired the required engineers and robotics experts. Several analysts were extremely pessimistic about how the whole idea of driverless cars could completely fail. Now that Uber’s first commercial launch is just days away, all we can do is wait and watch.
In addition, the public test will be done in collaboration with Volvo. The XC90 by Volvo will lurk the streets of Pittsburgh, and will be fully customized with several cameras, sensors, radars, and other gadgets for the car to drive around itself.
Customers within Pittsburgh will order an Uber and a modified Volvo XC90 can show up at their doorstep. The rides will be free initially, as part of the promotion, and riders will be charged after the test rides turn out to be successful.
Although these Volvo SUVs will not be driven by a human, they still will not be completely driverless. It is said that there will be two people inside the car, one behind the wheel, another an engineer to take control of the car and analyze its activity and response.
Other than Volvo, one more company that is believed to make Uber’s recent initiative a success is Otto. A startup that made self-driving truck technology, it began its operations in January this year, but is a subsidiary of the ride-hailing service. Otto was built by four experts who left Google: Anthony Levandowski, and Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette.
The ride-sharing service seeks to expand this service as it has placed an order of a total of 100 such cars, out of which several have been delivered and the remaining will be available by the end of this year. In fact, Uber and Volvo cars have signed a contract of $300 million to get a fully autonomous car ready by 2021.
Soon there will be other car manufacturers onboard with Uber for the driverless cars, but the company will not go for mass production of such cars. We are really optimistic and excited about this initiative, as it can prove to be a blessing for many disabled individuals, and can prevent a number of accidents that occur due to reckless driving.
The first-ever public launch of a driverless car could really help Uber rake in a fortune if the results are positive.
