Those Uber Self-Driving Car Rides in Pittsburgh Are FREE

Is that the most important part of the story? Probably the robot car aspect is still the most important.

More than one person tipped me off to this story—as if y’all thought I needed to be TIPPED OFF—but here is what you need to know:

Uber is working with Volvo to launch self-driving cars in Pittsburgh later this month.

Let’s bring in the pull quotes:

Uber Debuts Its First Fleet of Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh

Uber’s Pittsburgh fleet, which will be supervised by humans in the driver’s seat for the time being, consists of specially modified Volvo XC90 sport-utility vehicles outfitted with dozens of sensors that use cameras, lasers, radar, and GPS receivers.

The cars have lasers!

Uber’s first self-driving cars will start picking up passengers this month

Each vehicle will be staffed by one engineer, who can take the wheel as/when needed, and a co-pilot to observe and take notes. There will also be a “liquid-cooled” computer sitting in the trunk recording trip and map data.

The computers will be cooled by liquid!

Uber Is Rolling Driverless Cars in Pittsburgh. Each One Has Two Drivers.

Uber customers will be slotted into the few driverless cars at random, and those trips will be free.

They are giving these world-changing trips away for free!

At first I was all “Ha ha, I cannot really go to Pittsburgh and try to catch a ride in a robot Uber, right? That would be ridiculous.” But I had to check, just to make sure there weren’t a few $195 flights I could grab:

Ugh, nope. I am going to be on the East Coast in September (to see Hamilton), so I could in theory add an extra day to my trip and take the Amtrak to Pittsburgh just to ride in a self-driving Uber… but I feel like that would be a really, really ridiculous thing to do. The self-driving Ubers will expand to other cities eventually. Probably sooner than we think.

If you’re a Pittsburgher Billfolder, are you going to try and catch a ride? (And if you do, can you please tell me how awesome it is?)

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