Tuesday, December 8th, 2020
Division is sold
Uber is parting with autonomous driving
Self-driving cars are supposed to save Uber costs at some point. But the development is anything but smooth, in the end the division becomes too expensive for the ailing group. Now she will take over the startup Aurora.
The driving service provider Uber is giving up the costly development of its own technology for self-driving cars. The corresponding department will be taken over by the robot car startup Aurora, as the companies announced. Uber is also investing $ 400 million in Aurora, which will gain access to the Uber platform as a strategic partner.
The development of their own technology for autonomous driving was pushed by Uber co-founder and long-time boss Travis Kalanick. He saw this as an opportunity to save costs when computers replace people behind the wheel.
Kalanick brought on board Anthony Levandowski, a prominent developer from Google's robot car project, as project manager. The Internet company then sued Uber, alleging that Levandowski let confidential information go with him. In the long legal battle, Levandowski was fired and Uber had to pledge not to use Google technology.
The only fatal accident to date with a robot car is also due to the Uber program. In March 2018, during a night test drive in Tempe, Arizona, one of the Uber vehicles hit a woman who was crossing the multi-lane carriageway while pushing a bicycle beside her. According to the findings of accident investigators, the Uber software was initially unable to classify what it was seeing. In addition, the safety driver at the wheel was distracted and Uber had deactivated the automatic braking systems of the converted production vehicle.
Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been in office since August 2017, had already taken various austerity measures, but so far spared the development of robot car technology. However, the corona pandemic brought new burdens quarter after quarter. Last quarter there was a loss of $ 1.1 billion and revenue fell 18 percent. The technology blog "Techcrunch" reported on discussions between Uber and Aurora back in November.
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