Uber and Daimler Partner to Deliver Ride-Hailing Autonomous Vehicles
Uber has announced that it will partner with German automaker Daimler. As a part of the partnership, Daimler will build autonomous vehicles that will eventually operate on Uber’s ride-hailing network.
“Auto manufacturers like Daimler are crucial to our strategy because Uber has no experience making cars — and in fact, making cars is really hard,” says Uber’s chief executive Travis Kalanick in a company press release.
With that in mind, Uber will not be helping Daimler with the development of these vehicles, as they will leave that task solely to the company that is best known for developing the Mercedes-Benz.
“That’s why instead of building them ourselves, we want to partner with the best auto manufacturers in the world,” Kalanick says. “We can combine Uber’s global ridesharing network with the world-class vehicles of companies like Daimler, so that Uber riders can have a great experience getting around their cities.”
This partnership comes at a perfect time, as Daimler has a new corporate strategy called CASE, which stands for “Connected”, “Autonomous”, “Shared & Services” and “Electric.”
Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars, believes that CASE is the future to successful mobility.
“Mobility service providers offer an ideal platform for autonomous driving technology and Uber is a leading mobility platform company,” Zetsche says in a Daimler press release.
“The real revolution in future mobility lies in intelligently linking the four major trends we call CASE: connectivity, autonomous driving, sharing and electric mobility. And we will certainly be the driver of these changes.”
Each company believes that the vehicles will be ready for Uber’s network in the coming years.
