Uber’s apparent plans for driverless cars appears to be gaining steam after it announced the hiring of Ford director of global electronics and engineering Sherif Marakby. Marakby will oversee “manufacturer strategy and integration efforts,” although there is no indication of what he will actually be doing.
The issue here is that fact that Uber refuses to confirm whether it is actually working on a literal driverless car. There are a number of indications that it is looking into the idea of autonomous vehicles, as there are rumours of the ride-sharing company shopping for cars in Germany.
Marakby joins another former Googler Brian McClendon, who was also poached to work on Uber’s driverless car programme. The company has been on a hiring spree to fill out its team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; poaching the entire robotics division at Carnegie Mellon University in the process.
It is difficult to say what exactly Uber is working on for autonomous vehicles, but it highly unlikely that it will be building its own vehicles.
[Source: The Verge]
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