Uber Unveils Self-Riding Car In Pittsburgh

Uber, the App-based car hire service revealed its first self-driving car yesterday on the streets of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In a statement released by the San Francisco-based company, the move is meant to save lives, adding that 94 per cent of the accidents that kill 1.3 million people every year involved human error.

In the future, we believe this technology will mean less congestion, more affordable and accessible transportation, and far fewer lives lost in car accidents,” Uber said in its statement.

But as with all self-driving cars that are approved for testing on public roads, Uber’s vehicle will have a safety driver who can take over the controls should the situation demand it.

The car, a Ford Fusion Hybrid with a roof full of radar, lasers and cameras, will be collecting road-mapping data as well as testing its real world traffic reactions.

Uber’s interest in autonomous car technology started a year ago, when the $60 billion start-up began hiring Carnegie Mellon University robotics experts to staff its new centre.

Uber has a research centre in Pittsburgh and said it chose the city because it “is an ideal environment to develop and test our technology across a wide variety of road types, traffic patterns and weather conditions.”

Self-driving, however, has a financial appeal for Uber as CEO Travis Kalanick has on a number of occasions made reference to the fact that the driver is the most expensive part of its financial model.

Speaking at the Code Conference in 2014, shortly after Google unveiled its self-driving car prototype, Kalanick said, “When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. So the magic there is, you basically bring the cost below the cost of ownership for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”

This move by Uber is an innovation that challenges the existing taxi business.