Six years after ditching personalized cars for the self-driving market, Uber is back, though not in the way you might expect. The ridesharing giant has revealed a prototype version Hyundai Ioniq 5 this will be used to collect self-driving data for partners like Waymo and WeRide.
The personalized EV Through an alliance with tuning company Roush Performance, it adds eight lidar (laser-based) sensors, nine radar sensors and 14 cameras. One of NVIDIA’s Dual Drive Thor computers will process the collected data.
Uber says it will start driving 500 prototype cars around the world this year, with the first 50 hitting the streets this summer.
The company hopes to collect nearly two million miles of “highly refined” data each month and develop the most diverse training data set possible for autonomous vehicles. Partners can use the content to better understand how a self-driving car behaves or reacts in unexpected situations.
Why does Uber resell its cars?
He wants to be your go-to source for self-driving information
Uber has not operated private vehicles since 2020 after selling its autonomous driving unit. Aurora Innovation. The company originally hoped to offer full service with its own vehicles, but those plans were put on hold after a 2018 incident in which a test vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian.
Instead, the company shifted to offering ride-hailing services partners who are potential competitorsLike Waymo, WeRide and Nuro. You may not be sitting in an Uber car, but you are using its app to book rides.
Uber expanded its ambitions earlier this year when it launched AV Labs, a division designed to collect and share data. Ideally, the company becomes even more indispensable as robotaxi operators depend on it to gain real-world driving knowledge that they can’t get through their own cars or simulations.
Leading from behind the scenes
With this approach, Uber is theoretically successful even if it never deploys its own robot. The bigger the driverless brand, the more likely it is to need data to improve efficiency and safety. While big companies like Waymo and Volkswagen are often big enough to rely on their own know-how, it helps them speed up their sales—and ultimately you can get to self-driving faster.
Source: Uber
