Uber’s former CEO, Travis Kalanick, made clear Wednesday. He thinks that the company’s decision to give up an autonomous driving program is a mistake. Kalanick said at the Abundance Summit in Los Angeles. At that time, we were actually behind Waymo, but it will probably catch it. And we tried to convey them in a short order. . . I didn’t run the company when it happened, but you can say that ‘we want to have autonomous driving sharing products now. It will be good. ‘”
Uber sold autonomous driving departments to Aurora, a self -driving technology developer in 2020, three years after Kalanick retired. At that time it was meaningful. Autonomous driving was bleeding cash and Uber had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Waymo’s autonomous cars are now tooling around the bay area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix and pop -up in a new market.
Waymo recently partnered with Uber in Austin, and Uber says that the platform will be important for growing the service. But business is a business and partnership is shaken. If Waymo determines that a broker is not needed, the Uber may be trapped in itself when the future of transportation is.
