Skip to main content

Volvo Cars and Uber join forces to develop autonomous driving cars

Swedish car maker Volvo Cars is to join forces with ride-sharing company Uber to develop next generation autonomous driving cars, alliance marks the beginning of what both companies view as a longer term industrial partnership. The two companies have signed an agreement to establish a joint project that will develop new base vehicles that will be able to incorporate the latest developments in autonomous driving technologies, up to and including fully autonomous driverless cars. The base vehicles will be
August 19, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
Swedish car maker 7192 Volvo Cars is to join forces with ride-sharing company 8336 Uber to develop next generation autonomous driving cars, alliance marks the beginning of what both companies view as a longer term industrial partnership.

The two companies have signed an agreement to establish a joint project that will develop new base vehicles that will be able to incorporate the latest developments in autonomous driving technologies, up to and including fully autonomous driverless cars. The base vehicles will be manufactured by Volvo Cars and then purchased from Volvo by Uber. Volvo Cars and Uber are contributing a combined US$300 million to the project.

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 new base vehicle will be developed on Volvo Cars’ fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), which Volvo says is one of the most advanced car architectures in the world. It is currently used on Volvo Cars’ XC90 SUV, as well as the S90 premium sedan and V90 premium estate.

SPA has been developed as part of Volvo Cars’ US$1 billion global industrial transformation programme, which started in 2010, and has been prepared from the outset for the latest autonomous drive technologies as well as next generation electrification and connectivity developments.

The development work will be conducted by Volvo Cars engineers and Uber engineers in close collaboration. This project will further add to the scalability of the SPA platform to include all needed safety, redundancy and new features required to have autonomous vehicles on the road.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • IBTTA 2011 Annual Meeting highlights developing trends in tolling
    January 26, 2012
    Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser of this year's IBTTA Annual Meeting and Exhibition, talks about hot topics for discussion. The IBTTA's 79th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, which takes place this year in Berlin in September, will once again take many of the developing trends from around the world and look at their effects on the tolling sector. Host organisation Toll Collect's Alain Estiot, chief meeting organiser, says that the event has to be viewed against a backdrop of major global change.
  • Partnership delivers video surveillance solution
    November 28, 2012
    In a partnership designed to address and overcome the challenges of the amounts of data generated by digital video surveillance systems, video surveillance and security products supplier Samsung Techwin is to collaborate with computer and IP storage provider Pivot3 to offer a unified IP video surveillance solution to new and existing clients. By combining Pivot3 vSTAC Watch appliances with Samsung video management software and security cameras, surveillance users can leverage one appliance for the viewing,
  • The growth of ITS service solutions providers
    July 26, 2012
    Econolite's new subsidiary Aegis ITS has been set up to address the increasingly complex and exacting needs of agencies in the ITS sector. Chief Operating Officer Doug Terry talks about the evolution to service solution provider. A few very notable and honourable exceptions notwithstanding, it is these days becoming increasingly rare to find a public agency which develops its own traffic management systems. Indeed, most now rely on specialist manufacturers and suppliers to fulfil their needs. This has the h
  • Joining the dots: four ways to help cities make the connection
    May 18, 2018
    Smoothing the path to connected transportation systems in urban areas all round the world takes a lot of planning: Cisco’s Kyle Connor lays out the four key areas on which he thinks cities should focus. Forward-thinking cities around the world are exploring innovative, new ways to leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) and related technologies to create more connected and efficient transportation systems. Through greater digitisation and connectivity, cities can optimise public transit routes, reduce