Recently, according to the "Auto News" website, Volvo has signed a framework agreement with Uber for a three-year transaction, Volvo will sell up to 24,000 cars to Uber, which will form Uber's first robot taxi team.
Volvo said it will sell Uber to the XC90, which uses Volvo's core autonomous driving technology, and Uber will add its own autonomous driving function to the vehicles.
Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelson said in a statement: "Technology flow has caused the automotive industry to face subversive changes, Volvo chose to be an active player in this transformation. Our goal is to become a global player. Suppliers of autonomous driving shared travel services. Signing a framework agreement with Uber is exactly what Volvo is doing along the above strategic direction."
Ube will first launch a self-driving car purchased from Volvo in the US, but the company did not specify the starting city of the above model and when it will pick up and drop off passengers.
In an interview with European Automotive News, Jeff Miller, head of the Uber Automation Alliance, said: "Our goal is to be able to operate unmanned vehicles in selected cities and environments. The latter is defined as the fourth. Level autopilot."
When asked about when Uber would have a fifth-level self-driving car, Jeff Miller’s answer was: “At present, no one in the people I know claims that they can achieve the fifth level of automatic driving. Vehicles that reach this level can drive automatically at any time, anywhere."
Volvo said that the vehicle supply agreement signed with Uber is valid from 2019 to 2021.
Willing to do, can do
The vehicle supply agreement with Uber is the largest single transaction in Volvo's 90-year history. Analysts pointed out that providing autonomous driving to Uber means that Volvo has surpassed other competitors in this field, such as Daimler. Mercedes Benz and BMW. According to Hakan Samuelson, the future development of the shared travel sector is indispensable for the participation of autonomous driving technology.
Hakan Samuelson told the European Automotive News reporter: "Robot taxi is a brand new market, and we are the first company to offer commercial models for this market. Many people have already participated in shared travel. In the field, they will realize that there is nothing better than using a self-driving car to pick up passengers. What we have done is to prove to Volvo that Volvo is willing and able to provide self-driving cars for the shared travel market."
Volvo is still looking for more partners to achieve the above goals. Hakan Samuelson said: "We are willing to provide similar self-driving cars for other shared travel companies. Thanks to the SPA architecture we use, our advantage is that not only can the XC90 with autopilot be available. We can also port this technology to other models built on SPA-based platforms."
Other Volvo models based on the SPA platform include the S90 sedan, the V90 wagon and the XC60 crossover.
Achieving a successful architecture
Jeff Miller pointed out that the SPA architecture is a key factor in Uber's final decision to choose Volvo to work with.
He said: "The SPA architecture is currently the most popular electric vehicle production architecture in the automotive industry, which allows us to better integrate our systems into vehicles."
Both Volvo and Uber did not specify the exact amount of the deal, but both companies expect it to be a "very cost-effective" deal.
Hakan Samuelson said that shared cars with autonomous driving capabilities can operate 24/7. He also revealed another reason why Uber purchased the XC90 car, that is, the basic model of the car has been put into mass production.
deep cooperation
Jeff Miller said that in the past three years, Volvo and Uber have invested tens of thousands of hours in engineering cooperation. In the future, the scale of this use will also rise sharply. He said that there is still a lot of work to be done to integrate Volvo's system into Uber's system, and the engineering work involved is very huge.
Jeff Miller said that although Uber will not change the power system of the XC90, it will make changes to the vehicle control and braking system to terminate the work. He said: "We will change the two elements in the car, so the original ordinary car will become a vehicle with the fourth level of automatic driving function. We will also set the sensor around the body. The above changes It will be completed by Uber and Volvo."
The earliest cooperation between Volvo and Uber dates back to August 2016, when the two sides announced a $300 million cooperation agreement, Volvo will supply Uber with 100 XC90 cars as the latter's first in Pittsburgh, USA. A self-driving shared special model for the travel team. Since then, the two sides have also carried out a series of cooperation on the hardware of the automatic driving system.
Manufacturing plan
When asked about when Uber would make additional modifications to the purchased XC90 car for autopilot, Jeff Miller said the exact time has not yet been determined.
He told reporters: "We are currently using small-scale use and testing in Pittsburgh, and at the same time we are looking for a variety of options for achieving scale production."
Hakan Samuelson revealed that the basic XC90 models to be delivered to Uber will all come from Volvo's manufacturing facility in Torslanda, near Gothenburg, Sweden. She also said that once Volvo's plant in Charleston, Southern California, will launch the next-generation XC90 in 2021, Uber will be able to take the car directly from the plant.
Hakan Samuelson also stressed that cooperation with Uber is critical to achieving its goal of self-driving cars. He said: "The cooperation with Uber engineers has benefited our engineers. I think the cooperation with Uber will help Volvo to develop its own fourth-level self-driving car." Volvo's goal is to launch the first fully automatic drive by 2021. car.
Wavelet fold
Volvo and Uber are called "true love." In March of this year, Uber had an accident during the autopilot test and caused public outcry, which led to Uber suspending the test of self-driving cars. However, Volvo chose to stand with Uber. At that time, a Volvo XC90 car modified by Uber crashed into another car in Tempe, Arizona. The police said that the XC90, which was being driven automatically at the time of the incident, was not illegal, and the other car was The driver was accused of driving illegally after the accident.
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