Uber is taking its vehicles equipped with autonomous driving technologies back to the roads within the scope of its new AV Lab project. Rather than serving as robotaxis, these vehicles will be used solely to collect information for autonomous driving partners.

The company equips its vehicles with standard autonomous driving equipment such as camera, lidar and radar. However, these vehicles will be driven entirely manually and will perform regular trips on Uber’s existing ride-hailing network.

New data-driven strategy

After selling its autonomous vehicle part in 2020, Uber chose to become a platform provider rather than a direct developer in this field. The company is now returning to the field to provide the critical data that autonomous vehicle initiatives need.

Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy stated that these vehicles will analyze severe driving situations encountered in their network, which carries 40 million trips daily. This information will be provided free of charge to partners developing autonomous driving technology.

It is assumed that autonomous driving operators will need at least 10 million miles of information before they can achieve their first public driverless driving launches. Uber aims to produce at least 2 million miles of information per month with its AV Lab fleet by the end of this year.

Although the project is being carried out with a single Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the initial phase, company officials state that different models can be used in the future. This initiative aims to reduce the costs of developers such as Wayve, WeRide, Nuro and Waabi, who do not have as high cash resources as Waymo or Tesla.

A new era for autonomous analysis

Earlier in the year, Uber announced the Uber Autonomous Solutions project to provide various services to its robotaxi partners. This project helps partners develop autonomous vehicles faster by using training information obtained from thousands of test vehicles.

With this information gathering process, the company aims to consolidate its place in the autonomous vehicle ecosystem as a technology provider. Uber plans to further increase its information collection capacity by 2027, and with this strategy, it supports many enterprises in the sector to scale their commercial services more quickly.

How much do you think Uber’s data collection initiative can accelerate the proliferation of autonomous vehicles?