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

  • Mature solutions for emerging economies
    June 8, 2015
    Siemens’ Marcus Welz talks to David Crawford about suitable ITS solutions for emerging economies. Be bold in vision - and output - and user-oriented in practice,” Marcus Welz advises emerging economies planning ITS investments. Says the Siemens Group senior vice president and global sales director for ITS: “Their road users need better, more reliable and safer trips – but without costs increasing too much. The good news is that many countries are already tackling the big issues of traffic and the environmen
  • Yeti more AV snow-clearing by Semcon
    April 29, 2019
    There is a lot of debate about the place of autonomous vehicles on our roads – but a Swedish company is already ploughing ahead with driverless snow clearance on airport runways, writes David Arminas Femcon, a Swedish applied automation company, has started an on-site project to clear snow from runway landing lights using autonomous vehicles (AVs). Most often, this time-consuming job has to be done manually because of the intricate manoeuvres needed to avoid damaging the lighting systems. The trial pro
  • Outsourcing security weakness for Sweden’s driver and vehicle data
    October 24, 2017
    The security of driver and vehicle data hit the headlines this summer in Sweden and its authorities are still dealing with the fallout. David Crawford reports. epercussions from Sweden’s vehicle data outsourcing scandal continue to reverberate. Transportstyrelsen, the government’s transport agency, came under fire this summer for risking the personal security of over five million motorists by failing to implement full security checks on personnel in other countries to whom individual work packages could
  • Congestion pricing - no such thing as a free ride
    October 2, 2018
    The widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles is likely to increase congestion, many experts believe. But Wes Guckert of Traffic Group believes that tolling could provide the answer. While it is still hard to wrap your head around the idea of getting into a vehicle without a driver, the industry is now used to hearing, reading, participating in the advancement of autonomous vehicles (AVs). Those in the industry have heard about Uber delivering a shipment of Budweiser, or the convoy of driverless trucks