Uber on Wednesday unveiled a Hyundai Ioniq 5 prototype fitted with cameras, lidar, and radar to gather real-world driving data for autonomous vehicle partners including Waymo, WeRide, and Avride.

Uber said it plans to roll out 500 of the vehicles globally this year and expects 50 on the road by summer.

Roush Performance will handle the retrofits, while Nvidia’s Dual Drive Thor autonomous vehicle computer will process the sensor data.

Uber said the fleet will be able to collect 2 million miles of data per month.

The program marks the first vehicle Uber has assembled itself, with help from a partner, since it sold its former self-driving unit Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), which developed software, hardware, and product design for self-driving vehicles, to Aurora in 2020.

Unlike that effort, Uber now said it provides tools, data, and infrastructure to help autonomous vehicle partners deploy and scale, suggesting the new fleet is focused on training data rather than building its own autonomous vehicle technology.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch

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