Uber wants to turn its millions of drivers into roving sensors for self-driving companies. Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber's chief technology officer, announced the plan at TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in San Francisco. It's an extension of AV Labs, a program the company launched in January.
This positions Uber as infrastructure for the autonomous vehicle industry rather than a competitor — a notably humbler role for a company that once spent billions building its own self-driving cars. The sensor network could provide real-world driving data that AV companies desperately need to train their systems. Uber gets a new revenue stream without the massive R&D costs of building autonomous vehicles itself.
The obvious catch: drivers haven't agreed to become data collectors, and it's unclear what, if anything, they'll get in return. Uber abandoned its own self-driving car ambitions in 2020 after years of setbacks and a fatal accident. This is a quieter way back into the game.