Saw this news story just now…
And imagined a conversations between a couple of uber executives:
Curious move by Volvo. XC90 is widely popular but who is really going to want them when they become a cookie cutter car service suv you see everywhere?
Yeah, I doubt that they’re expecting that self-driving tech is going to happen very quickly. For (at least) the next few years it’s still going to be a head-turner and a hyped novelty kind of thing. So, Volvo would of course want to benefit from this publicity, while not actually investing cash in self-driving technology.
Delivered between 2019 and 2021… Yikes
Uber pitched their way through many Taxi/Limo authorities and local goverments proclaiming how they were creating new jobs for anyone who wanted to be a driver. They are now firmly entrenched in the US, have over 300k drivers, have nearly killed the legacy business and are investing their profits into tech that will essentially remove their own drivers jobs. I hope it fails spectacularly for them.
Uber did not buy Volvo XC90. They put down max MSDs and used Costco discount to get the XC90 for 299 a month , 10k miles …
This is a press release. Wake me up when these start burning fuel
http://autoweek.com/article/autonomous-cars/uber-suspends-autonomous-car-program-after-arizona-crash
Not sure if it’s going to fail in the long run, but it certainly is not happening soon. Uber’s former ceo, Kalanick was a visionary behind this idea of completely replacing drivers with machines, and so they didn’t care about their drivers and have been neglecting them for a long time. Kalanick was recently kicked out under some lame made-up reason, and within weeks Uber introduced tips for drivers, started posting riders’ star rating, bumped up signup bonuses etc. I sense that self-driving tech is being delayed 
However, they’re also getting into a couple of other interesting ventures. From what I’ve seen on their job board, they’re building new “uber freight”, and “vehicle solutions” teams.
First is self-explanatory - uber for trucks, and it is a potentially bottomless jar of gold. Also, trucks and highways are likely to be the early adopters of semi-autonomous self-driving.
Second is a marketplace for short- and long-term leasing specifically for uber drivers (at first?).
Ya, it’s really prudent for a company to turn down 24,000 vehicles sales…
Pretty small thinking there, bud.
