Uber CEO: Full Driverless Is More Than 15 Years Away
via Politico Pro, June 11, 2019
By Tanya Snyder
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said today that he doesn’t expect Uber’s ride-hailing service to be fully driverless for at least 15 years.
“No drivers? I think it will be 15-plus years,” he said in an interview at the Economic Club of Washington. “I think it’ll take a long time.”
“There’s this drama about robots replacing humans, and I think the better thing than humans alone and robots alone are robots and humans working together,” Khosrowshahi said. Noting that robots are good at repetitive, predictable tasks, he said, “We’ll get machines to do the simple stuff, then we’ll have humans do the difficult stuff” like navigating roundabouts and unprotected left turns.
Still, he said he thinks that within the next five years, there will be “some driverless vehicles out in the markets in a very, very limited way.”
With the Uber Elevate conference beginning later today, Khosrowshahi also spoke briefly about Uber’s plans for a pooled helicopter transportation service, saying that he expected that a ride from downtown Manhattan to JFK in an Uber helicopter would cost about $200. He said they wanted to price it for “the masses, versus just the elites.”
He said the helicopter taxis will “eventually be driverless” but did not offer a timeline.
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