A Silicon Valley startup called “Otto” has just been bought by Uber, with the goal of putting a fleet of the self-driving trucks on the nation’s highways in as little as two years. At 55 miles an hour, with no one behind the wheel, Otto has tested its technology on closed roads. For test runs on the busy freeway, a safety driver sits behind the wheel, just in case. "We're living in an on-demand era where we all want to press a button and have something arrive as fast as possible. Well, there's a truck behind all of those products." said Lior Ron, cofounder of Otto, the ultimate goal is to make every truck a self-driving truck.
The announcement that Uber is buying Otto for an estimated $680 million gives the ride-sharing giant access to Otto’s advanced technology to further its own push into self-driving vehicles.
“The key for all of this is about accelerating that future, really bring the best of minds from our team, from the existing Uber team, that will allow us to really get to that future sooner than later, There's more and more demand for truck drivers to drive more with less time," Ron said.
For Uber, the impetus behind the acquisition is clear. By buying Otto, Uber bought proprietary autonomous technology that can be retrofitted into vehicles. As an Uber property, Otto stays intact largely and will continue to focus on getting self-driving trucks on the road and building out a logistics platform. But Levandowski — the original architect of Google’s self-driving cars — will now be leading all of Uber’s self-driving efforts, which includes Otto. Current Otto employees would get a fifth of profits Uber earns from a self-driving trucking business.
In a blog post Uber said it will work on self-driving technology across three sectors: personal transportation, delivery, and trucking, leveraging both its ongoing robotics research and the "data and intelligence that comes from doing 1.2 billion miles on the road every month."
