Uber is also launching its self-driving cars, not as robotaxis

Uber is bringing its autonomous vehicles to the road as part of its new AV Lab project to collect data for its many robotaxis. These vehicles will be equipped with all self-driving equipment, such as cameras, lidar, and radar. But mostly the cars are not working as robotaxis, they are just collecting data for Uber’s many robotaxis friends.

That’s an important distinction, especially if you know anything about Uber’s history with self-driving cars. Uber sold its AV division in 2020 after one of its self-driving cars killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Since then, the company has partnered with many AV startups, becoming a technology transfer platform rather than a software developer.

But the startups are hungry for data, so Uber is striking. The company is deploying more fully equipped vehicles for autonomous driving on its ridehail network. These vehicles, which will be driven manually, will generate income and complete regular Uber trips, Balaji Krishnamurthy, the company’s chief financial officer, said. said on X. Most importantly, they will be “knowing more about the ‘edge'” that our network handles many times a day, as we achieve 40M daily traffic,” Krishnamurthy said.

AV users need at least 10 million data points to reach their first launch without driving, Krishnamurthy speculated. To that end, Uber’s new AV fleet will generate at least 2 million miles per month by the end of this year, “and will increase from there in 2027,” he said.

The project is starting small with just one Hyundai Ioniq 5 Uber management said Results TechCrunch they are not married to that model. Driver data will be provided free of charge to Uber partners, including companies like Wave, WeRide, Only, Confirmationand others. I agree that most AV manufacturers are not as rich as Waymo, Tesla, and other leading AV manufacturers, and could use some help paying more for the startup costs.

At the beginning of this year, the company announced a new service called Uber Autonomous Solutions to provide various services to robotaxi partners. One of those things was learning information from the company’s fleet of thousands of test vehicles that are running in many cities. Uber said this could help its partners improve their autonomous vehicles as they look to rapidly expand their robotaxi business.