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Marking the next step in their strategic collaboration, Volvo Cars and Uber on Wednesday presented a jointly developed production car capable of driving by itself.
The Volvo XC90 SUV is the first production car that, in combination with Uber’s self-driving system, is capable of fully driving itself, according to a statement from Volvo Cars.
“We believe the autonomous-drive technology will allow us to further improve safety, the foundation of our company,” said Håkan Samuelsson, President and CEO of Volvo Cars.
“By the middle of the next decade, we expect one-third of all cars we sell to be fully autonomous. Our agreement with Uber underlines our ambition to be the supplier of choice to the world’s leading ride-hailing companies,” Samuelsson added.
The XC90 base vehicle is equipped with key safety features that allow Uber to easily install its own self-driving system, enabling the possible future deployment of self-driving cars in Uber’s network as an autonomous ride-sharing service, the company said.
Uber and Volvo Cars entered a joint engineering agreement in 2016 and have since developed several prototypes aimed at accelerating the companies’ self-driving car development. The autonomous drive-capable production vehicle revealed on Wednesday is part of Volvo Cars’ 2016 commercial agreement with Uber for the delivery of tens of thousands of autonomous drive-ready base cars in coming years.
Back-up feature
The important features of Volvo Cars’ autonomous drive-ready production vehicle include several back-up systems for both steering and braking functions, as well as battery back-up power.
If any of the primary systems fail for some reason, the back-up systems are designed to immediately act to bring the car to a stop, the company said.
In addition to Volvo’s built-in back-up systems, an array of sensors atop and built into the vehicle are designed for Uber’s self-driving system to safely operate and manoeuvre in an urban environment, it added.
“Working in close cooperation with companies like Volvo is a key ingredient to effectively building a safe, scalable, self-driving fleet,” said Eric Meyhofer, CEO of Uber Advanced Technologies Group.
Volvo Cars said it plans to use a similar autonomous-base vehicle concept for the introduction of its future autonomous-drive cars in the early 2020s.
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