The US company joins the manufacturer Volvo to offer its first journeys intelligent vehicles in Pittsburgh, United States.
The future is not far off. Uber announced Thursday the start of service by autonomous cars in late August. It will initially reserved to the city of Pittsburgh, in the United States. These rather special trips will be randomly assigned to Uber customers Pittsburgh. They will be free. Two people accompany the customer in the car, for regulatory reasons and analysis. They will be responsible for measuring vehicle performance and avoid injury. One hundred autonomous vehicles must travel the streets of Pittsburgh by the end of the year.
The choice of the city has nothing to chance. Uber opened in Pittsburg research center dedicated to autonomous cars. The US company employs several hundred engineers, specialists in robotics and mechanics. For this new service Uber has signed a partnership with the car manufacturer Volvo. The first vehicles to go Pittsburg are Volvo XC90, a sports model, equipped with cameras and sensors. The two companies will invest more than $ 300 million to develop completely autonomous cars without the help of a human, by 2021. The Uber ambitions do not stop motorcars. The company also announced Thursday its acquisition of Otto, a US start-up specialized in the autonomous trucks. “It’s not a matter of scientific prowess,” says Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek . “We have real commercial ambitions.”
This announcement has shaken the market for autonomous cars already in full swing. Google was one of the first companies to position themselves in this niche. For its Google sillonent Californian roads since 2015. They are still in the testing stage: vehicles can not exceed 40 km / h and only carry engineers to control their operation. Other Web giants followed, drawing on their expertise in software and artificial intelligence. Apple has recruited several engineers of the California manufacturer of luxury electric vehicles Tesla (whose cars have autonomous driving mode) and a former executive of Fiat Chrysler. The Chinese group Baidu hopes to present its first model of autonomous car in 2018.
After some reluctance, car manufacturers have followed suit. Ford announced earlier this week will produce an autonomous car without a steering wheel or pedals for 2021. The manufacturer has invested in four specialized start-up and wants to double the size of its research center about 300 to 600 engineers. Ford wants to first offer these vehicles to precisely Uber and Lyft competitor. Between new technology and automakers companies, the bridges are numerous, each benefiting from the expertise of others. BMW has teamed up with Intel and the start-up Mobileye. Google, Ford, Uber, Lyft and Volvo have launched a lobby group to influence the regulations governing this new activity in the United States.
Despite the general enthusiasm, autonomous vehicles are still the subject of much suspicion. In July, the automatic pilot of a Tesla car caused the first fatal accident, reviving the debate on security of such software. Because Google was also responsible for several minor incidents. Regulators are closely watching the development of these vehicles. In France, the Council of Ministers has authorized the beginning of August traffic on the highway autonomous cars for experimental purposes. French manufacturers approach the subject with caution. PSA has already linked Paris and Amsterdam with an autonomous car. Renault hopes, he soon propose in 2018 an “advanced support system to conduct” similar to Tesla.
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