Uber swung one of the largest deals for autonomous vehicles Monday, ordering 24,000 vehicles from Volvo — a move that is expected to advance the case for self-driving cars on American streets.  Passengers can already hail a ride inside a driverless taxi in a small number of U.S. cities — most prominently Pittsburgh — but not without a human operator inside the vehicle.   Monday’s deal between Uber and Volvo could set the stage for something entirely new: thousands of autonomous vehicles ­ferrying paying customers to their destinations without a human ­operator, the beginning of a ­multibillion-dollar robot revolution that could dramatically reconfigure how people get from one place to another.

Source: Washington Post

Date: November 21. 2017

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/uber-signs-deal-to-buy-24000-autonomous-vehicles-from-volvo/2017/11/20/d6038f28-ce2a-11e7-81bc-c55a220c8cbe_story.html?utm_term=.7dea5aa68ff7

Discussion

1) Uber is best known as a ride-hailing company, but here we see that Uber is more about changing the way we ride.  What other companies have changed how we live?

2) Uber, Lyft and the like have provided a large amount of so-called “contractless jobs” where people “work” for Uber but really work for themselves.  How will self-driving vehicles change the labor market?