J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:


I would be interested to know a couple of things (though these should
_not_ determine any decisions, because you have to allow for deaf
pedestrians):

Was it an electric car (and thus rather quiet)? Was she hard of hearing?
Do any of the autonomous systems currently being developed use the horn?
(I'm pretty sure the answer to that one is no, probably because the
false positives would result in its over-use and thus be used [as
another argument] against autonomous vehicles; however, once things
improve in that respect, I'd say they should - if audible warnings
_inside_ the car are a good thing, then they would be outside too.)

I tried to track that information down.

Uber has set up a contract with Volvo, for up to 24,000 cars.
The Volvo is a regular car, with "gubbins" added for smart control.
So, for example, the steering would have an electric motor to
move the rack and pinion. Uber then installs a kit, to provide
"drive" to the steering motor and make it autonomous.

Volvo makes a whole pile of cars, under the stated Uber contract
model number.

The current generation of Volvo, offered both gasoline and tdi (diesel)
models. With various transmission offerings.

In 2019, some of the Uber fleet cars they might take delivery
of, would include plug-in hybrid cars. It will be 2019, in theory,
before a "quiet" car could be a problem. Could they have received
prototypes of those ? Not likely.

But, it's pretty hard to get reliable information, as the initial
orders for Uber are filled with "table scraps" on a lot by lot
basis. The overall contract is for UC60 cars, and 100 cars
in Pittsburgh are UV60 (tdi) cars. Apparently. But the reliability
of this information is suspect.

All I can really say at this point, is it's a car, and it
came from the Chinese owner of Volvo.

"Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g...66S1TC20100802

Paul