Volvo Cars and Uber team up for joint venture developing autonomous vehicles w/ video ~ All About Ford Mustang

Volvo Cars continues to move forward with its efforts to innovate and the company’s latest partnership with Uber is living proof. Just recently, the two entities joined forces to cooperatively develop autonomous driving vehicles to develop a self-driving fleet for Uber.

In the latest statement, the two pledged a combined total of $300 million USD to researching and developing the entire project. It consists of Uber buying a bunch of XC90, S90, and V90 vehicles, and fitting them with Uber’s latest autonomous driving tech. That tech is what’s going to be developed between the two companies, but there’s a specific reason why Uber chose Volvo.

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The XC90, S90, and V90 cars are all built on Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture, which is jargon for the company’s modular platform for large vehicles. Not only is the SPA platform, designed with the latest in structural safety, they are also designed with autonomous driving tech in mind. So they basically are premade to accommodate technology expansion with electrification and autonomous driving tech.

Volvo didn’t mention the use of its Compact Modular Architecture, or the new platform currently being developed for the company’s new line of compact and subcompact cars. So this means the project will focus mainly on use of the XC90, the S90, and V90.

“Volvo is a world leader in the development of active safety and autonomous drive technology and possesses an unrivaled safety credibility,” said Håkan Samuelsson in the statement, Volvo Cars’ president and CEO. “We are very proud to be the partner of choice for Uber, one of the world’s leading technology companies. This alliance places Volvo at the heart of the current technological revolution in the automotive industry.”

In a separate report by Bloomberg, Uber will launch its initial pilot of test fleet vehicles, offering the metropolitan Pittsburgh area free rides as part of promoting the campaign for an entire month.

Volvo’s participation in this joint venture is also supported by its Vision 2020 campaign, where the company is striving to have nobody killed or injured in a new Volvo by 2020.

Check out the press release and videos below.