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

  • Google’s self-driving cars can ‘exceed the speed limit to aid safety’
    August 20, 2014
    According to Google's lead software engineer, Dmitri Dolgov, the company’s self-driving cars are programmed to stay within the speed limit, mostly. Research shows that sticking to the speed limit when other cars are going much faster actually can be dangerous, Dolgov says, so its autonomous car can go up to 10 mph (16 kph) above the speed limit when traffic conditions warrant. Dolgov told Reuters during a test drive that when surrounding vehicles were breaking the speed limit, going more slowly could act
  • Volvo Group developing safety systems at new test track
    August 22, 2014
    AstaZero, the world’s first full-scale test track for active automotive safety located in Borås, Sweden has officially opened. The 2000,000 square meters testing area simulates cities as well as multilane motorways and rural roads with intersections. It is here that the Volvo Group will test and develop future safety solutions for heavy vehicles. The Volvo Group claims its vision is to have no Group vehicles involved in traffic accidents and the Group’s safety experts have studied data from traffic acci
  • SRP to accelerate development of future transport systems in UK
    October 1, 2018
    Avia, BP, Hastings Direct and Honda R&D have been named as founding members of a shared research programme (SRP) to test and develop transport technologies in the UK. The SRP is investing in a three-year year project at the Smart Mobility Living Lab: London (SMLL) led by the Transport Research Laboratory and DG Cities – the commercial arm of Digital Greenwich. SMLL, a set of routes in and around the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (site of the London 2012 Olympics), is
  • Richard Butter introduces ‘smarter, more innovative’ Intertraffic
    April 5, 2016
    Intertraffic Amsterdam 2016 is bigger, smarter, more innovative, more connected, and more relevant than ever before, as Richard Butter, domain manager for Intertraffic Worldwide Events, explains.