Volvo Cars, the Swedish premium car maker, and Uber, the world’s leading ride-sharing company, have signed an agreement to develop next generation Autonomous Driving(AD) cars.
Both companies will establish a joint project with a combined USD300 million funding to develop a new base vehicles that will be able to incorporate the latest developments in AD technologies. The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then purchased from Volvo by Uber.
Both Uber and Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of their own autonomous car strategies. This will involve Uber adding its own self-developed autonomous driving systems to the Volvo base vehicle. Volvo will use the same base vehicle for the next stage of its own autonomous car strategy, which will involve fully autonomous driving.
The development work will be conducted by Volvo Cars engineers and Uber engineers in close collaboration.
Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars
Volvo is a world leader in the development of active safety and autonomous drive technology and possesses an unrivaled safety credibility. We are very proud to be the partner of choice for Uber, one of the world’s leading technology companies.
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive
Over one million people die in car accidents every year. These are tragedies that self-driving technology can help solve, but we can’t do this alone. That’s why our partnership with a great manufacturer like Volvo is so important.
