There’s a slim chance you’ve already heard, but in case you haven’t, driverless cars are, like, totally the future.
Near enough every major automotive manufacturer has discussed plans to move to a driverless future, and tech giants such as Google and Uber are already leading the charge.
Not wanting to be left out of the driver-shunning future, Amazon is now reportedly getting in on the autonomous vehicle movement.
Citing unnamed insider sources, The Wall Street Journal has claimed the online retail giant has created its own spin-off division tasked with developing new driverless car tech.
Unlike Uber and Google, however, Amazon’s driverless car efforts aren’t to be based around getting you where you need to be more safely and without the hassle of actually driving yourself.
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Instead, it’s believed the firm is looking to the future of automotive efforts in a bid to ditch delivery drivers and significantly lower shipping costs and general running fees.
According to the reports, the Amazon research efforts comprises of around a dozen members and was first pieced together around a year ago.
Far from the first time Amazon has looked at ways of removing delivery drivers from the online shopping process, the company has already started trialling drone and robotic delivery services.
There’s no word on how advanced Amazon’s driverless vehicle efforts are at this stage, or how packages delivered by autonomous cars would be transported from the vehicle to customers’ doorsteps.
It’s not the only one looking at driver-free haulage either, with Tesla’s Elon Musk have recently announced plans to introduced autonomous lorries.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
