The future of ride sharing might be completely autonomous. And Uber wants to be on the leading edge.
What’s happening:
- Ride sharing giant Uber (NASDAQ: UBER) has announced a new partnership with autonomous vehicle company Cruise to begin offering driverless rides to users in select locations in the United States of America
Why it matters:
- Autonomous vehicles have been making an enormous amount of progress, with startups such as Applied Intuition raising a mega funding round from some of the most legendary investors in Silicon Valley and Dubai previously announcing their intent to build the largest autonomous trucking network in the world
- The rapid rise in the capabilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology has also accelerated breakthroughs in self driving vehicles, which has even led OpenAI to begin making venture bets of their own into startups in the space
Going deeper:
- Uber already has an existing partnership with autonomous vehicle company Waymo to offer driverless rides to users, as well as a previously announced partnership with autonomous commercial truck company Aurora to begin hauling freight shipments for Uber between Dallas and Houston
- Cruise has successfully been doing test rides across major cities in the Untied States of America, including Phoenix, Dallas and Houston to validate their self driving technology
The intrigue:
- Uber also recently invested into Canadian startup Waabi’s latest financing round to accelerate their autonomous commercial vehicles
