Read, play, talk and even sleep while leaving transported by his car. If many dream of the day when they can drive without license, the arrival of the autonomous car scares others. What will it happen to the millions of people who make their living driving, such as taxi drivers, motor carriers or taxis? Like all great technological innovations, the autonomous car is perceived as a threat to employment.
Fears today refuted by the owner of Uber, Travis Kalanick. Even as his company announced a partnership with Volvo for the construction of autonomous cars and the deployment of its first fleet of vehicles of this type in Pittsburgh at the end of the month, the American entrepreneur required to respond to criticism. In an interview Thursday, August 18 to Business Insider , he assured that with this new activity, his company would create jobs, not destroy:
“I do not think the number of drivers will soon decline. in fact, I think in an autonomous world it will increase.”
An increase in absolute value
in reaching this conclusion, Travis Kalanick made with the US news website the following demonstration:
” If you speak of a city like San Francisco, we have about 30,000 active drivers. Now, suppose we move from 30,000 to say a million cars. Even when you have a million cars, you will still need a system driving parallel assured by man or in a hybrid manner. This because there are places where autonomous cars simply will not go or conditions they will not be able to manage. I imagine there will be 50,000 to 100,000 human drivers, even if they represent a smaller percentage of the one million cars. “
In absolute terms, the future therefore count more drivers according to the boss of Uber. provided, however, that the number of cars in circulation explodes well as he supposes, what is certain given the development of alternative modes of transport and that of car sharing .
to explain the increase in the number of jobs through the autonomous car, Travis Kalanick advance another argument, denying it: this technology will create new needs and therefore new jobs that will recruit .It cites as an example the arrival of the mobile phone which has created “a whole new industry.”
Uber Otto buys
Thursday, Uber has also announced the acquisition of California start-up Otto, which develops software for autonomous vehicles. “one of the co-founders of Otto, Anthony Levandowski, will now be responsible for directing the efforts of Uber in the development of vehicles without drivers,” said Travis Kalanick in a blog, quoted by AFP.
The amount of the acquisition was not specified, so Uber Otto is not publicly traded, but the American press evokes nearly 700 million.
Otto, which employs about 90 people, was known in May by announcing that he was working on an autonomous driving software for trucks. Its founders, Anthony Levandowski and Lior Ron, respectively worked in the past on projects without Google Car driver Car and mapping Google Maps
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