Swedish auto giant Volvo Cars Corp. today revealed that Uber Technologies Inc. has placed a landmark order for up to 24,000 sport utility vehicle a bid to build a fleet of self-driving taxis.

The deal is reportedly valued at approximately $1.4 billion and will see the vehicles delivered over a period of three years starting from 2019. They’re set to be based on Volvo’s XC90 series, a midsized SUV that sells at a starting price of around $50,000 in dealerships. It’s the same model that Uber has been using to pilot its autonomous driving technology in Pittsburgh.

Under the deal, Volvo will tailor the XC90s for the ride-hailing giant. Specifically, the SUVs are set to ship with automated braking and steering mechanisms designed to remove the need for a safety driver. This customization should reduce the amount of time that Uber needs to install its autonomous navigation system, which could help speed up the rollout.

But before the company can realize its vision of a fully autonomous taxi fleet, it must ensure that the software doing the driving is reliable. That will require Uber to build out the same kind of advanced navigation capabilities as those Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo division demonstrated last month. At a test track on the grounds of a former military base, the group showed off how its autonomous minivans can handle a variety of road types and potential dangers, including the occasional small animal running in front of a vehicle.

Waymo more recently became the first company to start testing self-driving cars without a human behind the wheel. Uber’s autonomous driving efforts, meanwhile, have been weighed down by a $1.8 billion lawsuit from the Alphabet subsidiary over an alleged theft of trade secrets.

Uber’s new deal with Volvo could prompt Waymo and other competitors to start building their own large-scale fleets. The Alphabet subsidiary is likely already on track to do so, having announced that it will launch an autonomous taxi service in the Phoenix metro area.

Both Waymo’s and Uber’s plans hinge on an extensive set of partnerships in the auto sector that they’ve painstakingly built over the past few years. In the case of the latter company, the effort extends far beyond Volvo. Uber has also teamed up with Daimler AG to build a test fleet of self-driving Mercedes cars.

As a result, it shouldn’t be surprising that the company’s agreement with Volvo is not exclusive. Retaining the option to use vehicles from other manufacturers allows Uber to avoid putting all of its eggs in one basket.

Volvo, in turn, is pursuing a similar approach. The car maker said that the customized XC90 model produced for Uber will serve as the foundation for its “own independent autonomous car strategy,” which is expected to culminate with the release of a self-driving vehicle in 2021.

Image: Volvo