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Does Uber Plan on Creating a Luxury Driverless Fleet?

March 19th, 2016  |  Auto

After reportedly spending $10 billion to order a massive fleet of Mercedes S-class sedans, one can only guess what Uber has in store for them.

According to Digital Trends the transportation network company made a deal for no less than 100,000 cars from the German luxury automaker. Considering that Uber’s primary business model is based around letting drivers use their own vehicles to provide service, their need for a fleet of high-end luxury vehicles can’t be very large. Unless, as some are suggesting, Uber is specifically looking for vehicles with autonomous capabilities in order to potentially develop an autonomous service.

The Mercedes’ autonomous capabilities aren’t quite at the level where you’d be comfortable taking your hands off the wheel, but with features like autonomous braking, parking assists, lane-centering, and more, it doesn’t seem a huge stretch for a company like Uber to try testing and developing it’s own software.

While this is still firmly in the rumour territory it’s no secret that the company hasn’t turned a profit despite its massive valuation. Part of the reason why is the cost of paying its human drivers, so be on the lookout for official word from the company announcing an even lower cost ride-on-demand service tier driven by computer one day.