Why Uber will invest $500 million to map the world

Uber plans to map the world, freeing itself from reliance on Google Maps and paving the way for its own fleet of driverless cars. Uber's mapping vehicles hit American roads last year, were introduced in Mexico earlier this summer, and will eventually extend to the other 76 countries where the ride-hailing service operates, gathering precise data on pickup and drop-off locations and traffic patterns. Following an influx of $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, Uber says it will invest $500 million in developing its in-house maps, the Financial Times reported. "With autonomous vehicles, maps are going to be fundamental," Brian McClendon, a vice president at Uber, told The Atlantic. "And the maps that are needed for autonomous vehicles are beyond anything that's being created today by any third party." An expert in geospatial data visualization, Mr. McClendon led Google Maps for more than a decade before jumping to Uber to lead its mapping projects last June.