It seems that Uber — facing a host of labor issues with its human driver force — has made a positive step in the direction of an automated solution.
According to an anonymous auto industry source quoted by Reuters, the ride-hailing service is circling a large order of self-driving cars.
“They wanted autonomous cars,” said the source, who declined to be named. “It seemed like they were shopping around.”
“We don’t want to end up like Nokia’s handset business, which was once hugely profitable … then disappeared,” a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber.
And further adding to the confusion going on in the auto industry these days, Mercedes rival BMW is toying with the idea of rolling out its own ride-hailing service.
“The value creation is shifting from the actual hardware toward software and services,” BMW’s new Chief Executive Harald Krueger said on Wednesday.