Uber announced a big deal — and it could mean driverless Mercedes at your door

2025-04-27 21:47:16admin

Uber's next round of self-driving cars won't be owned by Uber at all — and the cars could be Mercedes.

Daimler, the German automaker behind the Mercedes-Benz, will manufacture autonomous cars meant for Uber and and operate them through the ride-hailing company, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced in a blog post Tuesday.

"We can combine Uber’s global ridesharing network with the world-class vehicles of companies like Daimler, so that Uber riders can have a great experience getting around their cities," Kalanick wrote.

SEE ALSO: Volvo's plan for self-driving cars focuses on ... the driver?

The partnership is part of Uber's strategy to run a network of self-driving cars, but not build them itself. The ride-hailing company already operates the world's largest fleet of human-driven cars while owning only a fraction of them.

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"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.

Uber already has self-driving cars on the streets of Pittsburgh, and the company ended a test program in San Francisco after drawing the ire of California regulators. The autonomous cars first intended for California are instead moving to Arizona.

SEE ALSO: Uber wants to build a better map. Next stop? Australia.

Those self-driving cars were all Volvo XC90 SUVs through a partnership between the two companies. In that agreement, however, Uber purchased the autonomous cars from Volvo. Daimler will instead be entirely responsible for its self-driving vehicles in Uber's fleet.

"By opening up the Uber platform to Daimler, we can get to the future faster than going it alone," Kalanick wrote.

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