Uber

Waymo’s lawsuit against Uber this February was surprising given Google and Alphabet’s usual hesitancy towards suing. However, Waymo found Uber’s alleged actions a particularly large affront. Reuters has now discovered what Waymo demanded from Uber in settlement talks to stop the case from heading to trial.

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Uber has announced this weekend that as soon as next week, they will deploy a fleet of 50 new Tesla vehicles under its UberONE service in Dubai.
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Here’s an interesting initiative from Uber. The ride-hailing company is funding an effort to have all its drivers in London, and there are apparently 40,000 of them today, switch to electric and hybrid cars by 2025.

Furthermore, all new cars going on the company’s Uberx network will have to be electric by the end of 2019.
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Early Tesla and Uber investor Jason Calacanis is calling for a merger of the two companies, which he says could “beat everybody at transportation.”

Calacanis says that it would also solve Uber’s CEO search by making Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, in charge of both companies.
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Through the discovery process of the lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, in which the latter is accusing the former of having colluded with a former Google engineer, Anthony Levandowski, to steal technology from their self-driving car startup, we now learn that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Levandowski really don’t like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and some of the claims he made about the Autopilot program.
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According to Wild Ride, a book by Fortune magazine’s Adam Lashinsky coming out next week, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick approached Tesla CEO Elon Musk to partner up on autonomous car-sharing, but Musk refused to work with Uber.

A few days later, Musk announced Tesla’s own effort to bring an autonomous car-sharing fleet to market.
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According to a report this afternoon from Business Insider, Anthony Levandowski, the subject of a dramatic legal battle between Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber over alleged stolen self-driving car technology, has stepped aside from his role as lead of Uber’s Advanced Technologies group. Levandowski will reportedly continue overseeing operations and safety, however…

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If you are wondering how come there are so many news and announcement about electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft lately, like Lilium’s maiden flight and Kitty Hawk coming out of stealth, it looks like it’s because they timed the releases with Uber’s Elevate Summit in Dallas this week.

Today, Uber announced its own plans to use eVTOL aircraft for a flying taxi service.
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Uber has a few interesting electric vehicle initiatives, like an all-electric fleet pilot project with 20 Nissan LEAFs in London and they deployed a fleet of Tesla Model S in Madrid, but now they are bringing their first EV program stateside.

The company will help drivers purchase or lease electric vehicles. They are starting the program in Portland, Oregon, but hopefully, they expand the program to other markets.
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Uber has been under a lot of pressure over the past few months from several different angles, including with their self-driving effort. They had problems with regulators in California after a self-driving prototype ran a red light and now they are being sued by Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car company, over their lidar sensor technology.

Now one of their self-driving prototypes in Arizona was involved in an accident that resulted in the car rolling over. Fortunately, no one was injured. 
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Alphabet-owned Waymo is now asking a judge to stop Uber from using the self-driving car tech it claims the ride hailing company stole, in what is the latest development in a legal feud between the two companies. This news follows Waymo’s suit against Uber that was filed late last month over theft of key self-driving technology…

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Alphabet’s Waymo subsidiary has filed a lawsuit against Uber over the theft and replication of a key self-driving component. Former employees working on Google’s self-driving project allegedly stole information before leaving for a start-up that was purchased by Uber.

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Daimler and Uber made an announcement today that explains a few rumors that were going around in the auto industry last year. The two companies announced a partnership that will result in the German automaker building and operating a fleet of self-driving cars on Uber’s ride-sharing network.
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As we reported yesterday, Tesla is suing its former Director of Autopilot programs, Sterling Anderson. The company claims that he allegedly poached Tesla employees and stole confidential information in order to start a competing company with Chris Urmson, the former head of Google’s self-driving program.

Anderson denies the allegations, but regardless of what happened, Tesla made a bold claim about the motive behind launching his new company and in the process, they took a solid swipe at GM and Uber.
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The city of Madrid in Spain already has one of the biggest fleet of all-electric taxis in the world. Earlier this year, we reported on a local taxi company adding 110 Nissan LEAFs to its fleet as the local government was taking measures to improve the increasingly poor air quality in the city.

Uber has had problems operating in Madrid in the past with its unlicensed drivers, but now the company has decided not only to use licensed drivers, but also to have them drive all-electric Tesla Model S sedans.
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Uber’s short-lived self-driving ride program is officially coming to an end. The ride-hailing service began giving self-driving rides exactly one week ago in San Francisco, but that same day California regulators told the company it must stop the pilot program because it had not gone through the proper permit process.

After the request, the company insisted that it could run the program anyway, but in a statement to TechCrunch today, Uber confirmed that it is ending its self-driving pilot in San Francisco.

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Earlier today, we reported on Uber launching its autonomous ride-sharing pilot program in San Francisco and how it was justifying not needing a permit to operate self-driving cars, unlike the 20 other companies developing similar systems in California.

Just hours later, a video (embedded below) showing one of Uber’s self-driving cars running a red light in a pedestrian path in San Francisco was released, and later California regulators told the company that it needed to stop its self-driving car service in the state until it goes through the process of getting a permit.

Update: Uber has since released a statement blaming the driver of the car. See video and statement below
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US President-elect and environmental foil Donald Trump set up a Strategic and Policy Team on December 2nd made up of business leaders and chaired by Stephen Schwarzman Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone Financial Services. Most of the people on the original board were folks from traditional American “Blue Chip” companies including Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors.

Today, Along with Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi, untraditional transportation leaders were added to the list: Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick, CEO and Co-Founder of Uber were announced via press release.
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Uber is reportedly planning to bring to San Francisco an autonomous ride-sharing program similar to its pilot program launched in Pittsburgh earlier this year where customers using Uber’s app can be picked up by an “autonomous vehicle” with a company engineer behind the wheel. The company wrote in a press release:

Starting today, riders who request an uberX in San Francisco will be matched with a Self-Driving Uber if one is available. Expanding our self-driving pilot allows us to continue to improve our technology through real-world operations. With its challenging roads and often varied weather, Pittsburgh provided a wide array of experiences. San Francisco comes with its own nuances including more bikes on the road, high traffic density and narrow lanes.

The problem is that Uber doesn’t have a permit to operate autonomous vehicles in California and it justifies its right to operate anyway through some sketchy semantics.
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Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by early team members of Google’s autonomous car program and recently acquired by Uber, announced today that it “completed the world’s first shipment by self-driving cars”.

There are some nuances to the ‘autonomous level’ of the drive, but it’s nonetheless an impressive accomplishment.
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