Uber to put 500 data-collection vehicles on the road this year

Key points

• Uber revealed on Wednesday a prototype car that it plans to use to scoop up real-world driving data for its growing roster of autonomous vehicle partners, including Avride, Waymo, and WeRide.
• The vehicle is not some radical design.
• Rather, it’s a Hyundai Ioniq 5 fitted with an incredible number of sensors on the top and sides, as the company first told TechCrunch back in January.
• The sensor-laden vehicle may not look particularly groundbreaking, but it does mark a few milestones for the company.
• This is the first vehicle Uber has assembled itself (with help from a partner) since the company sold its autonomous vehicle division to Aurora in 2020. It also represents progress on Uber’s new AV Labs division, which launched earlier this year to use sensor-equipped Uber cars to collect and then share data with its 30-and-counting autonomous vehicle technology partners.