Uber has teamed up with Mercedes' parent company to build self-driving cars

January 31, 2017

Uber has teamed up with Mercedes' parent company to build self-driving cars

daimler

Uber has teamed up with Daimler to build self-driving cars, marking the third partnership between Uber and a major automaker for its autonomous efforts.

Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes, will build self-driving cars for Uber, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wrote in a blog post Tuesday. Ford built self-driving Ford Fusions for Uber's first self-driving pilot in Pittsburgh, and Volvo supplied the self-driving XC90s for Uber's San Francisco pilot.

(The San Francisco pilot was moved to Arizona after Uber refused to file necessary permits with the California DMV.)

"Auto manufacturers like Daimler are crucial to our strategy because Uber has no experience making cars—and in fact, making cars is really hard," Kalanick wrote in the blog post. "That’s why instead of building them ourselves, we want to partner with the best auto manufacturers in the world."

Daimler made history when its self-driving truck became the first to drive itself on a public highway in 2015. Uber also has ambitions in the self-driving truck space — it acquired self-driving-truck startup Otto in August.

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