Uber Working With Auto Makers to Design EVs Customized for Ride-Sharing, Delivery VIPLANE

Mercedes-Benz has pitched it; Zoox’s whole business is based around it. If you’re making cars or selling car technology, at some point you imagine people facing each other in a bubble-shaped minivan. There’s a reason buses make sense as a public transit option, packing bodies into a slow-moving vehicle is an efficient way of getting people around.

There’s nothing to suggest Uber is the company to make this happen, but the fact it still pictures drivers as a part of this equation — even as it’s starting to explore self-driving (again) and delivery robots — does make it seem more possible. And with the company’s issues with labor and the new costs changing work requirements abroad could incur, anything that makes running a ride-hailing business possibly less expensive in the long term is probably worth considering.