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83 'Uber' stories August 2015 - August 2016
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Uber to launch an all-electric fleet pilot project, starting with 20 Nissan LEAFs in London

Avatar for Fred Lambert Aug 31 2016 - 12:10 pm PT
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Uber and Nissan announced today that they launched what they are referring to as “a new, major electric vehicle (EV) project”. The project starts with the trial of an all-electric fleet of 20 Nissan LEAFs in London starting in September.

The project will be studied by the Energy Savings Trust (EST) in order to “look into the feasibility of running large numbers of electric private hire vehicles in the UK.”
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Uber reveals a fleet of human-supervised self-driving cars available to customers in Pittsburgh

Avatar for Fred Lambert Aug 18 2016 - 8:54 am PT
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Only 3 months after its test fleet started hitting the streets of Pittsburgh, Uber announced today that it is rolling out a fleet of human-supervised self-driving cars available to customers by the end of the month. The company unveiled its modified Volvo XC90 SUV equipped with cameras, lidar, radar and GPS (pictured above).

A few will be in operation by the end of the month and a fleet of 100 by the end of the year.
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Tesla’s former Head of User Experience joins Uber on a secret project

Avatar for Fred Lambert May 31 2016 - 12:45 pm PT
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Tesla’s user interface is quite unique in the auto industry. Most of the controls are activated through the 17-in touchscreen, which as often been compared to an iPad, so it wasn’t too surprising when Tesla hired a senior designer from Apple to lead its user interface design.

Brennan Boblett was working on the design team of the iTunes Store when he joined Tesla back in 2010 to “create the most visually stunning and exciting large screen interface the automotive world has ever seen”, as he described at the time.

He worked under Tesla’s Chief Designer, Franz von Holzhausen, but as the company grew, he was quickly promoted and ended up managing both the UI and UX teams in 2012. Boblett stayed with Tesla for over 5 years and led the user experience development of the Model S, Model X and even the early work of the Model 3.
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Tesla is building a new Growth Team ‘from scratch’ ahead of the Model 3 launch, hires from Facebook and Uber

Avatar for Fred Lambert May 9 2016 - 3:23 pm PT
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What is a growth team you ask? A growth team within a company is generally a small data driven group tasked with figuring out how to scale the business. Most often, the day-to-day work will consist of planning growth models and running them in simulations in order to develop the best possible way to expand.

Facebook had an important growth team that significantly contributed to the company reaching one of the biggest user base in the history of any product ever – same thing for Uber, but on a much smaller scale.

Now that Tesla plans to expand significantly in the next few years through the introduction of the Model 3 and Tesla Energy products, Electrek has learned that the automaker has started building a growth team “from scratch”. It started by hiring from Facebook and Uber; two of the best examples of optimizing growth through growth teams.
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Lyft reportedly planning to pilot self-driving Chevy Bolt taxis ‘within a year’

Avatar for Stephen Hall May 5 2016 - 3:56 pm PT
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According to a report today from The Wall Street Journal, GM and Lyft are partnering to test a fleet of self-driving electric taxis sometime within the next year in an undisclosed city. The pilot will reportedly take advantage of GM’s Chevrolet Bolt, a speedy compact crossover all-electric that we took for a test drive earlier this year…


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Google joins Uber, Ford in coalition to promote federal self-driving car regulations

Avatar for Michael Wade Apr 26 2016 - 3:15 pm PT
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Google joins Uber, Ford, Volvo and Lyft in forming a Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets to promote self driving car regulations on a federal level versus state by state level. Google has been battling the California DMV who have proposed to ban Google’s Koala car that does not have a steering wheel or pedals and would not require a licensed driver.


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After considering Tesla, Uber reportedly placed an order with Mercedes for 100,000 self-driving cars

Avatar for Fred Lambert Mar 18 2016 - 11:22 am PT
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Last year, famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Tesla investor Steve Juvertson recalled a conversation he had with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:

Travis recently told me that in 2020, if Telsas are autonomous, he’d want to buy all of them. He said all 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I’d want them all, but he couldn’t get a return call from Elon.

Well apparently Kalanick couldn’t wait any longer and reportedly already placed an order for 100,000 autonomous Mercedes S-Class sedans, according to sources inside Daimler and Uber talking to German magazine Manager Magazin. 
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Uber hires automotive designer who worked on “classified” concepts for Tesla

Avatar for Fred Lambert Dec 18 2015 - 10:20 am PT
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It’s no secret that Uber wants to develop its own self-driving car technology, but much like Google, it isn’t clear if the company only wants to develop the technology to be implemented in existing vehicles or go all the way and develop its own car. The ride-sharing company’s latest hire suggest it could be the latter.

We learned that earlier this month, Uber hired veteran automotive designer Richard Donnelly for the role of “Senior Designer” at the company’s Advanced Technology Center.
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Tesla likely working on an autonomous ride-sharing scheme but hasn’t decided on implementation

Avatar for Fred Lambert Nov 6 2015 - 11:08 am PT
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Adam Jonas, a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley covering Tesla Motors and the automotive industry, is nothing if not persistent. During Tesla’s recent conference call to discuss third quarter financial results, the analyst again asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the possibility for the company to join the likes of Uber and Lyft in the ride-sharing industry.

Jonas first brought up the idea at Tesla’s last quarterly conference call after comments made by Tesla board member Steve Juvertson about Uber CEO Travis Kalanick potentially wanting to buy 500,000 autonomous Teslas by the end of the decade. First time around earlier this year, Jonas got a firm “no comment” from Musk, but nonetheless the CEO called his question “insightful” at the time. The second time around during this week’s call, Jonas pushed the question again and although Musk’s first reaction was not to comment, which is rare for the CEO, he implied that an announcement could be coming.
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Morgan Stanley increases its price target for Tesla’s stock to $465 and predicts “Tesla Mobility”

Avatar for Fred Lambert Aug 18 2015 - 6:25 am PT
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Adam Jonas, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, published a note yesterday to update the firm’s price target on Tesla’s stock to $465 from $280.  The updated price target includes a whole new business segment called “Tesla Mobility” which Jonas expects Tesla to announce within the next 12 to 18 months.
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Elon Musk evades a question about Uber and raises more interesting questions in the process

Avatar for Fred Lambert Aug 6 2015 - 7:19 am PT
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During yesterday’s conference call about Tesla’s second quarter financial results, Elon Musk refused to answer a question from a financial analyst about Travis Kalanick’s, Uber’s CEO, recent comments that his company would buy 500,000 Teslas in 2020 if they are equipped with Tesla’s self-driving technology by the end of the decade.

The short conversation was very revealing. Here it is in full:
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