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.

Related Content

  • February 14, 2019
    Cognitive Technologies to develop autonomous tram in Russia
    Cognitive Technologies has joined forces with Russian manufacturer PC Transport Systems to deploy an autonomous tram on the streets of Moscow by 2022. Cognitive says that its simplified system means autonomous trams will appear on public roads much earlier than self-driving cars. The company claims its system will detect vehicle and other trams, traffic lights, pedestrians, tram and bus stops, railway and switches and obstacles. Also, the technology will allow the tram to stop in front of obstacles a
  • May 6, 2021
    Gogoro to aid India EV transition
    Gogoro battery-swapping platform combines artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • January 11, 2013
    In-vehicle vision-based systems and autonomous vehicles
    The Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory (VisLab) of Italy’s Parma University has built itself a fine pedigree in basic and applied research which has developed machine vision algorithms and intelligent systems for the automotive field. In 1998, a VisLab-equipped Lancia Thema named ‘Argo’ travelled along the famous Mille Miglia race route and completed 98 per cent of it autonomously using then-current technology. In 2005, VisLab provided the vision element of the Terramax, a collaborative un
  • February 3, 2012
    Is DSRC progressive enough for future connected mobility?
    Dedicated Short Range Communications technology, says Cisco's Paul Brubaker, is not by itself progressive enough to sustain long-term innovation in the connected mobility environment - and yet IPv6 and other developments remain largely ignored by policy-makers