# NY Times: Uber Partners With Daimler



## Retired Senior (Sep 12, 2016)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/...ing-car.html&eventName=Watching-article-click

*Technology *
*Uber Partners With Daimler in a Step Toward a Driverless Future*
By MIKE ISAACJAN. 31, 2017









An Uber self-driving vehicle during a test in San Francisco. The company announced on Tuesday a partnership with Daimler, under which the automaker planned to build autonomous vehicles that would operate on Uber's transportation network. Credit Eric Risberg/Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - Uber is one step closer to its dream of a self-driving future - with a little help from a new partner.

The ride-hailing company announced on Tuesday a partnership with Daimler, under which the German automaker plans to build autonomous vehicles that will operate on Uber's transportation network.

The move marks the first time a major automaker will provide its own self-driving vehicles - built entirely in-house and without Uber's help - specifically to operate on the ride-hailing company's network.

* Graphic *
* When Cars Drive Themselves *
There are increasing signs that autonomous cars have arrived - and may be driving our city streets sooner than we think.


OPEN Graphic
The agreement is not exclusive, and Daimler may produce autonomous cars for Uber's competitors, while Uber can also bring other automakers onto what it calls its "open platform" for ride hailing. The two companies said they expected Daimler's self-driving vehicles to reach Uber's network "in the coming years."

"Auto manufacturers like Daimler are crucial to our strategy because Uber has no experience making cars - and in fact, making cars is really hard," Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive, said in a statement. "We can combine Uber's global ride-sharing network with the world-class vehicles of companies like Daimler, so that Uber riders can have a great experience getting around their cities."

Uber has a history of cooperating with automakers to jointly produce autonomous vehicles. The company has worked with Volvo to develop the XC90, a self-driving sport utility vehicle now being tested in Pittsburgh, near Uber's self-driving research headquarters. Uber has also modified a fleet of Ford Fusion vehicles, outfitting them with sensors and cameras for autonomous capabilities.

* 5 Things That Give Self-Driving Cars Headaches *
Despite their multitude of sensors and processors, autonomous cars have a lot of trouble with some everyday aspects of driving.


Lyft, Uber's largest competitor in the United States, has also worked closely with a major automaker, General Motors, which is making its own self-driving vehicles for Lyft's ride-hailing network. Google struck a deal with Fiat Chrysler last year to work on self-driving vehicles.

Uber stands to benefit from the Daimler partnership in several ways. Collaborating with automakers could reduce the perception that Uber is a threat to the sales of the auto industry, for example. The company can also bolster its supply of vehicles to pick up a growing base of riders.

Uber faced some setbacks with its self-driving experiments last year. It ended a pilot program in San Francisco in December after disagreeing with California's Department of Motor Vehicles over whether it had the proper permits for the test. Uber plans to begin a similar test in Phoenix in the coming months.

"Daimler aims to be a leader in autonomous driving," Dieter Zetsche, Daimler's chairman, said in a statement. "Together with Uber, we seek to combine our strengths."


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## Karl Marx (May 17, 2016)

This is moving faster than anyone imagined. Learning machines are now scaling up into what is termed " fleet leaning." Essentially each car combines all the experience or data from all other autonomous cars and it is combined into an experience equal to more than a thousand human lifetimes.

Biggest obstacle to Uber and Google will be the "people problem". Many people like to commit suicide by car. We had a case here yesterday in Toronto on the Gardener Expressway. A grizzly but highly affective way to drag someone into your last act. Other issues will be people darting in and out of fleets of moving vehicles for sport, people throwing rocks etc. In a terrible incident I experienced, someone jumped from a ramp into my lane and the car behind took the full impact. The driver survived but with extensive injuries.

Would an autonomous car be able to do defensive manoeuvre? My hunch is yes. That incident still haunts me and that was over 20 years ago. I remember my old Calculus Professor remarking at the beginning of class about what humans do when driving a car or motorcycle. Essentially we are constantly problem solving using multivariate calculus when behind the wheel. That is why distracted driving is becoming the main reason for the huge increase in deadly crashes in the last several years. You Uber Pool drivers are highly likely to be involved in crashes when distracted by the Pool feature in your app. I eagerly await the first lawsuit by Uber driver and passengers who are involved in a deadly Pool Distraction Case.

Two Professors from MIT who are doing research in this area are saying 3 years for the widespread adoption of these new technologies. First industries to do rapid adoption will be the trucking industry. I can foresee Uber having downtown license in Toronto within 2 years. The reason it will be adopted so quickly in congested downtown areas is that Uber is having serious driver retention issues. Vehicle expense and driver time makes congestion uneconomical for drivers to make even anything close to minimum wage.

Uber is already doing serious lobbying in Washington and Ottawa to get these trials set up ASAP. In some ways I think this will be a short lived trial and by the end of 2020 we will see large fleets of Uber, Tesla and Google cars in cities around the world.

The big opportunity I see for employment will be in the small garages dotted around the city where these vehicles will need maintenance and cleaning. Perhaps the most amazing aspect is that we will see less pedestrians and cyclists being killed by cars and trucks. In the U.S. last year 32,400 people were killed and 424,000 were injured by motor vehicles.

Robots are always reminded that the their first command is not to kill.


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## Retired Senior (Sep 12, 2016)

KARL, I THINK THAT YOU ARE WILDLY OPTIMISTIC!
The number of assholes that I have had to deal with (by driving VERY DEFENSIVELY) since it started snowing Wednesday night has worn me out. These jack ass drivers will simply not allow the automated car revolution to take place because the automated cars will be over-whelmed by these idiots who drive like they own the road and threaten and intimidate all drivers who value their lives. Unless the state or federal government forces the change on citizens by outlawing conventional cars and their drivers I don't see it happening.

Windows 10 is out there and was free... yet millions of PC users cling to Windows XP! I am still using Windows 7. Perhaps 20 or 40 years from now, when private car ownership and licensed drivers have gone the way of the dodo birds, the future you envision will come to pass. But I have to tell you, men who came of age in the 1950s and 60s, no matter how public spirited we are in most things, and those of us who remember James Dean, will forever be rebels.... even if it is without a cause! It is just the way we are wired. To paraphrase the gun lobby

Now here - in a recent blast from the past -is the late, great Charlton Heston. If you substitute an individual's driver's license and car keys for Heston's gun, you will see my personal feelings regarding driverless cars.


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## Atom guy (Jul 27, 2016)

I'm still trying to figure out why Uber is wasting its money on autonomous tech, when virtually every automaker is working on it already. Is Uber planning on designing and building its own cars too, or are they going to hire an automaker to build cars for them, dumping that automakers autonomous tech for Ubers? Or will they try and retrofit more basic cars with their tech? It all makes no sense


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## germainebell (Dec 10, 2016)

Atom guy said:


> I'm still trying to figure out why Uber is wasting its money on autonomous tech, when virtually every automaker is working on it already. Is Uber planning on designing and building its own cars too, or are they going to hire an automaker to build cars for them, dumping that automakers autonomous tech for Ubers? Or will they try and retrofit more basic cars with their tech? It all makes no sense


As mention in the previous post the future of transportation will completely change once autonomous vehicles are released. The biggest change for automakers is that there will be fewer vehicles produced since there will be less need for vehicle to sit idle in parking lots waiting for their owners to return to them. As you can imagine this isn't something auto-manufactures are likely looking forward to so they will only push the technology as much as needed and mostly only focusing on how to make driving safer, but still keep people in control. On the other hand Uber wants the vehicles to go completely auto.


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## steveK2016 (Jul 31, 2016)

Until the majority of cars are autonomous, autonomous ride share will only be a dream. It may be able to account for their own driving, but cannot account for human error of non-autonomous vehicles. 

It's the future, but it ain't tomorrow...


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## Maven (Feb 9, 2017)

Anything else happening since the January 31, 2017 announcement? Google dropped out in 2016.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/12/google-has-reportedly-stopped-developing-its-own-self-driving-car/

There's a great video that partly explains why some people are still so optimistic and it turns out that I may have been wrong about autonomous cars coming before autonomous trucks.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...-strike-partnership-for-self-driving-vehicles


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