Uber signals driverless car ambition as first test vehicle hits the streets
Uber is seeking to get behind the driving seat of the driverless car revolution by testing its first vehicle on the streets of Pittsburgh – a customised Ford Fusion bristling with radar, laser scanners and cameras.
Conducted in partnership with Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University the initiative joins an increasingly crowded field with the likes of Google and Tesla leading the way.
Uber is keen to bring down the cost of its services further and further reduce pick-up times, ambitions it believes it can attain by doing away with the expense and limitation of employing human drivers.
For the time being however Uber is assuring the public that a trained driver will remain in the test vehicle at all times ready to resume control whilst testing is conducted.
Uber recently joined forces with Google, Volvo, Ford and rival ride-sharing platform Lyft in an effort to convince governments to remove some of the regulatory barriers currently blocking driverless vehicles from the roads.