Uber Expands Self-Driving Fleet In America

American cab aggregator company Uber has expanded its self-driving fleet in its home country. For the uninitiated, the first self-driving Uber fleet was introduced this September in Pittsburgh. Now, after three months, it has brought its self-driving Ubers to San Francisco. 

Uber has been testing the self-driving tech for nearly a year and a half and has been running an advanced technologies centre (ATC) in Pittsburgh for the same. The company also acquired Otto, an American self-driving technology company, and is also in a partnership with Volvo. The self-driving Ubers running in San Francisco are second-gen Volvo XC90s. 

Uber highlighted in an official release that its self-driving cars demand a ‘safety driver’ in the front seat since they require ‘human intervention in many conditions, including bad weather’. Also, the company believes that even after resolving these and other issues, ridesharing services will, in the future, be provided by a mix of drivers and self-driving Ubers. 

As we know, this is just the dawn of self-driving cars and technology, but things are moving at a lightning pace. Recently, Google announced its self-driving car manufacturing company – Waymo – which, the tech giant anticipates, will produce vehicles that’ll be useful as personal vehicles and help with ridesharing, logistics and public transport around the world. Tesla, which presently offers a self-driving tech in its cars, is also rapidly improving its renowned Autopilot feature and has recently announced that all of its cars will be fitted with self-driving hardware henceforth. 

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