The residents of the US city of Pittsburgh now have the option of going about their day in an Uber that drives itself.
Some of Uber’s heaviest users woke up to an email Wednesday inviting them to test out the company’s new self-driving cars, the centerpiece of a fully autonomous fleet Uber plans to use in the long run to replace human drivers. The pilot project, which is the first in the United States to include members of the public, offers a taste of a technological future thousands have only read about.
The web-based ride service has launched its driverless car service to jump ahead of Detroit auto giants and Silicon Valley rivals with technology that could revolutionise transportation.
A fleet of cars laden with lasers, cameras and other sensors — but no one’s hands on the wheel — will be deployed on the roads of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the first time self-driving cars have been so freely available to the US public.
Pittsburgh Uber users who summon a driverless car will also get two company technicians to make sure everything goes right, with one sitting behind the wheel, with hands at the ready to take over in sticky spots, and the other monitoring the car’s behaviour.
Though Uber is aiming to reduce that to one technician, still behind the wheel, to intervene and to satisfy existing state policies that require a driver in a car, with the eventual goal to get to zero interventions and no technician along for the ride.
The move has put Uber ahead of the rest of the auto industry in getting such cars out for the general public.
The introduction of driverless cars challenges the image of what Uber has become — an app-based service of the “gig economy” that has given millions of car owners around the world the chance to make money ferrying passengers without taxicab licenses or other permissions.
But Uber’s vision suggests a world of taxis on call by app with no drivers at all.
That would be far away, Uber officials have stressed, and they still expect over the long time, a mix of cars with and without drivers on the road.
Andrew Moore, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, said at least another decade of research and development was needed before there would be a significant number of truly autonomous cars on the road.
Industry executives remain sharply divided on the timeline, with some expecting fully autonomous cars within five years and others predicting they are still decades away.
