20 ms·

Uber shuts down self-driving trucks unit

467 points by mark-ruwt 8y ago

iampims 8y ago
It’s kind of surprising, I always imagined self driving trucks to be a more profitable business and “easier” challenge.
- griffinkelly 8y ago
  I agree, particularly with the huge demand for truck drivers, a hybrid model, allow the self driving to take over on the expressway/long haul, it could quickly become profitable pretty easily.
- fullshark 8y ago
  Perhaps the road from tech demo to minimal viable product is a lot longer than we think.
- Fomite 8y ago
  Surprises me as well. From the people I know in trucking related industries, they all thought that was clearly an important market and a prime adoption route.
- philwelch 8y ago
  From a technical standpoint, a lot of the effort is probably duplicated, except trucks are heavier and less maneuverable so they have some added challenges.
  - valuearb 8y ago
    They also have regulatory issues, loading and unloading issues, safety issues. How do you deal with a self-driving truck thats just had it's load shift in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from human help? It's not even close to the same effort as self driving cars, which is already so hard they might be a decade away.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  If you limit the trucks to only highway driving and design depots for them they might be easier but I think once you start trying to drive them on smaller roads there's a lot of issues that crop up. First and foremost is that there's a lot more vehicle to keep modeled and the dynamics of how to drive the cab to safely maneuver the trailer might require a way better model of the environment and the position of the trailer.
  - josh2600 8y ago
    Why wouldn't Uber just do long haul to a distribution point near a city and hire drivers for the last mile?
    - ellius 8y ago
      Seems like a brilliant way to make use of a semi-idling workforce.
    - griffinkelly 8y ago
      I think the big question in this game becomes to you want to be a logistics company, or do you want to become a technology company? Also, they don't let any Tom, Dick or Harry get a CDL, so that's a bit of a roadblock. Not like its too hard though.
    - rtkwe 8y ago
      Building all those distribution points would be fairly expensive and time intensive, a smaller market, and would still require contracting/employing a lot of medium distance drivers for the last X miles. 'Last mile' here is probably on the order of 20-50 miles at least with hundreds of distribution hubs.
      - UncleEntity 8y ago
        Most of the big carriers already have the distribution points set up all over the place with a bunch of local drivers covering the last mile. I (sort of) worked for Swift ~10 years ago and a lot of what I did was "drop and hook" at regional terminals or big warehouses. It was kind of uncommon to live (un)load -- mostly just drop the trailer I brought in where they told me, pick up an empty/loaded trailer and be on my way. When I ran reefers it was totally the opposite, super rare to not have to live unload. A lot of the big places would have pre-loaded trailers waiting but delivery points were usually much smaller so didn't have a bunch of space for trailers to sit around. And then there were the times when I was live loading produce in the middle of a (literal) field...
- deleted 8y ago
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aardvark291 8y ago
Does this mean Otto is being shut down?
sjroot 8y ago
This is surprising to me as well. I have seen first-hand how tedious it can be to find reliable truck drivers, particularly in the Midwest. I am eager to see how this industry shifts in the next couple decades.
arijun 8y ago
I've always felt that self driving trucks make the most economical sense to automate. A self driving truck would get to its destination faster (saving money) and without the need for a driver (saving money). And the majority of their time is spent on relatively predictable interstate roads, not the chaotic roads of a busy downtown, so they'd be simpler to automate. Otto (the self-driving truck company that Uber bought and is now shuttering) was the first I'd heard of that. It's a bit sad that they're shutting down.
- Klover 8y ago
  Not to mention that it can drive 24/7 when necessary, turning it into a mobile freight train.
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    Self service at the gas station?
    - Klover 8y ago
      I think that if you can figure out self driving trucks, you can figure out keeping it fueled as well. As a quick and easy solution I would imagine large enough fuel tanks on the truck itself, and a couple of gas stations with people fueling the trucks at places. One for every large industrial place would already make it very widespread. Another solution would be mechanical arms attaching to the truck.
      - snerbles 8y ago
        See Shell Oil's SmartPump...from 1997: https://robotnews.wordpress.com/2006/04/07/service-robots-shell-smart-pump-2/ https://robotnews.wordpress.com/2006/04/07/service-robots-sh...
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      Worst case, it signals a human fueler in advance of it's anticipated need to stop for gas, and the fueler meets it and handles fueling. Over time, though, building a network of compatible automated fueling stations to support the trucks makes sense, and you can use data from the trucks for siting decisions.
dontreact 8y ago
Could it be that losing the self driving car market to Waymo is more of an existential threat than not being first in the trucking business?
- amarka 8y ago
  That's a really good point. I also wonder if the cyclist accident changed the mood and/or culture at Uber when it comes to autonomous vehicles. I have to be honest that it would absolutely gut me inside to know that my software caused a death.
  - ghein 8y ago
    When you're designing or building some things you are just GOING to kill people. The right decision in designing a car (centre of gravity, stopping distance, thickness of gas tank) WILL kill many people. Incompetence killing people is one thing (bad spec for o-rings, Therac 25 programming leading to massive radiation dose) but in some programming domains you just are going to make decisions that end badly. If you make the right decisions you'll kill fewer people than the alternative but still some are going to die.
  - cdolan 8y ago
    I understand your point but the software didn’t exclusively cause the death. The software was known to be unreliable. In that way it did contribute to the person’s death. But so did the driver tasked with correcting the vehicle (who was watching Hulu), the technicians who disabled emergency brakes, and the company culture/management that thought this was safe in the first place. On a side note, my iPhone X knows when I’m looking at the camera to use FaceID. If I look away, am asleep, or otherwise occupied, it won’t open the phone. I’m not sure why Uber doesn’t use similar technology, in conjunction with steering wheel sensors to identify hands on the wheel, to force operators to stay alert. This seems particularly important if the software is unreliable.
    - bjl 8y ago
      If the software was known to be unreliable, then it shouldn't have been on the road. Everyone at Uber who worked on that project shares the blame.
fmpwizard 8y ago
I think the sad result of this story is that they are going to keep going with the self-driving car technology. During the investigation into the fatal crash accident they had, they showed how reckless they are. It would be great if they learned anything from the death of that person and rethink QA and decisions, but I doubt it. Time will tell.
- TillE 8y ago
  I really thought they'd pull out of self-driving tech after that. It's insane that they're right back on the roads a few months later. There's no way that's enough time to be sure your broken software isn't going to kill again.
  - ghostly_s 8y ago
    It certainly isn't responsible. But it's their only moonshot route to profitability, so innocent lives be damned.
    - charmides 8y ago
      Did you know that 1.3 MILLION people die in car accidents on a yearly basis? There are extremely good reasons to believe that a mature, self-driving car industry will lower that figure by orders of magnitude. It is a shame that there have been a few accidents now that the technology is in its infancy, but it is very short-sighted to wish that Uber halts its experiments and delays the technology from taking off.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Software didn't do anything wrong. Emergency braking was disabled and relied on the human driver. It is just another example of how assisted driving (such as tesla autopilot et al) is much more dangerous than nothing at all - driver disconnects and isn't paying attention, disaster is only a matter of when.
ebikelaw 8y ago
Soon to be followed by: Uber shuts down, full stop. Sure, Softbank shoveled another shipload of money into the gaping maw of this capital furnace, but they're still burning it. Now, in addition to a tragically bad main business, they also don't have the fairy tale about how autonomous vehicles will eventually make them win.
- valuearb 8y ago
  Nope, this is actually a sign of Uber finally having adult leadership. Dara Khosrowshahi has only been there 9 months but he's doing an outstanding job, getting Uber's priorities straight and refocusing the company. And their core business is a fantastic business. Bookings is still growing faster than 50% annually. It cut it's burn rate to $300M last quarter, despite the bleeding at dozens and dozens side projects like Trucks, Eats, etc, and still has $6B in the bank. Dana is getting them laser focused on their core business again, and they'll be profitable before you know it.
  - UberThrowaway13 8y ago
    Are you at Uber? Speaking as someone who is at Uber, I wouldn't say this is the case at all. Dara's successes have largely been on the PR front (huge successes), some good partnerships and an exit in SENA which was probably the right move given circumstances but shouldn't have happened in the first place. Things he hasn't done: 1) Kept Uber moving faster than competitors 2) Hired necessary leadership (CFO, CMO, CPO [he tried but the guy he hired originally was a total fraud. Huge swing and miss], etc.) 3) Driven focus on anything other than loyalty which is itself shaping up poorly 4) Gained back market share 5) Kept the best leaders. Losing Aaron Schildkrout alone was a massive loss, but there's been PLENTY of other leaders taking their sabbaticals and then quitting Turning to Eats, if we got rid of that (no way we would) we would lose the most dynamic and fast moving part of our business. It's the only place that still has the talent and structure of Uber 1.0 but without the awful cultural problems.
    - valuearb 8y ago
      I might be wrong on Eats, but I'm not wrong on the rest of the side businesses. And Dara has gotten the most important things right in the few months he's been there. You don't have choices in keeping foreign subsidiaries if your predecessor put the business on the route to bankruptcy, you shed what you have to shed before your cash on hand gets so low you lose all leverage in keeping the business financed. And if Aaron Schildkrout was so great, why was he working for Travis Kalanick, Stockholm syndrome? Why would you work for someone who constantly tarnished the company brand you needed in order to succeed in your job? It really sounds like Uber needs a complete house cleaning of it's entire upper ranks. You can play the "I was just following orders" card, but it also disqualifies you from being a true leader.
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TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Waymo is developing a self driving truck. With Uber out of the game, there’s more upside for Waymo.
tsycho 8y ago
Meanwhile, Waymo is expanding into self-driving trucks, saw them on 101.
valuearb 8y ago
The new CEO continues to impress. When he took over, Kalanick had Uber in something like a hundred side-businesses, a massive waste of focus, effort, brand and capital. This isn't the first or will be the last black hole side venture Dara is getting Uber out of. And he's already established his 100x better at PR and building/protecting the brand than Travis was. Uber never needed to be in the automated trucks business, there are zero synergies with their core business, and it's not even clear that will ever be a good business to be in. Is Uber Eats next on the chopping block? That would probably be my choice.
- lhorie 8y ago
  Eats? I don't think so. I heard it's one of the fastest growing verticals at Uber.
  - valuearb 8y ago
    It is, and it's huge. It's 10% of their revenues now. Which means it's burning more cash than any other vertical at Uber by far. Why does Uber need to fund this "business" for years to come? How does it benefit them to keep throwing money at it? Answer: It really doesn't. It's a huge distraction that might never be profitable.
    - seibelj 8y ago
      Wouldn’t using drivers who are already on the road, who drive to point A to pick up a person and drop them off at point B, make perfect sense to pick up food at point A and drop it off at point B? And considering food doesn’t take a pool spot, they could do everything simultaneously while picking up people. It makes perfect sense to me.
      - valuearb 8y ago
        You have $6B left. Building out ride sharing will cost more than $6B. So will building out Uber Eats. What'll it be, ride sharing, eats, or more dilution? Oh, and one of these business you are the clear #1 in, and the other, you have a chance to be #2.
newnewpdro 8y ago
Having experienced a winter car accident on a highway involving a semi truck where the truck wasn't damaged but my car was totaled, I am extremely grateful the truck stopped and its driver allowed me to wait in the heated cab while waiting for police to arrive. The idea of all these massive trucks autonomously operating on our highways strikes me as a very dystopian future. I appreciate the humans in the machines accompanying me on cross-country road trips. Without the truckers, much of these vast spaces will become far more desolate and dangerous to travel through. I'm fine with technology assisting truckers, but am hopeful there will continue to be a requirement of people being present with ultimate authority over the vehicle.
- cdolan 8y ago
  Great point. Out of curiosity, what happened in the accident that the driver was comfortable inviting you into his car? In many environments/scenarios that would seem risky, particularly after a traumatic event like a car accident.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    He had almost crashed into me by suddenly changing into my lane on a snow-covered highway. I braked to avoid the collision, he swerved back into his lane having seen me brake, but my car rotated from the too-agressive braking. I was able to prevent a spin, instead limiting it to some highway-speed unpleasant fishtailing, but the whole ordeal had brought my car awfully near his trailer which was now next to my car again due to his decelerating. There was a lot of snow/slush accumulated between the lanes, and this kept pulling the right side of my car closer to his trailer, regardless of what I did, before the tires of his trailer struck the rear corner my car, violently forcing my car under the trailer, shattering the driver and passenger windows from the compression. At that point it was pure chaos from above and the steering wheel was ripped from my hands by a frontal impact with the landing gear. Somehow after what seemed like an eternity my car broke free from captivity under the trailer and shot out the side and off the highway, through the air, before landing on an embankment and sledding down to a frozen water retention pond where it circled a few times before coming to a stop in complete silence. I can't speak to what was going through the trucker's mind when I knocked on his passenger window and told him I was the luckiest person on the planet, and asked if I could wait in his cabin until the police arrived. My car was not even visible from the highway. He claimed to have no idea what happened, just that he saw my headlights disappear after he swerved. He had no idea my car had been under his trailer. Typing this story has been surprisingly emotional.
ergothus 8y ago
I'm generally pro-self-driving vehicles, and while I don't want to underestimate the difficulties, given how far related tech has gone in recent years I think it'd be a mistake to assume any of this is "never" going to happen. Despite this, I've been very nervously watching how truck driving and self-driving interact. I feel like city-to-city long haul driving will have a very rapid turnover once a certain tech threshold is hit. That threshold might be 5 years out or 20 years out or even further, but once it is reached a lot of jobs cease to be as profitable very quickly. Trucking is a major source of strong employment for those without a college degree. It is a significant source of employment all across the US, and there are related effects - entire small towns and certainly many small businesses rely on the income from truckers. (Everything here is about the US because I know too little about non-US to have even these vague reactions) Miners have become a synonym for workers displaced by technology - yet mining was always 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than modern trucking and took multiple generations to decline. Trucking could lose a big chunk of the industry in the course of a decade or less, to the tune of a million drivers or more. Having a million or more drivers that are suddenly unemployed or under employed would have a huge impact on the economy and public faith in the economy. Having this occur is predictable even if we can't predict when. Yet how many have given serious discussion on how to handle the reaction once this starts coming to pass? Could be confirmation bias on my part, but I see cases like this - where the effort proved to be more complicated than expected - to falsely create the narrative that this is not a real problem to consider, which just makes the eventual impact worse. EDIT: Please stop thinking I want to "protect" trucking or "stop" self-driving technology. I want neither - I just want us (society) to take advantage of the time when we know a change is coming but isn't here yet rather than deny it as "not yet real" and then wring our hands in despair over the consequences once it IS real.
- charmides 8y ago
  This attitude is nothing new. But I don't think people are seeing the big picture. Self-driving cars may cause a temporary spike in unemployment, but the economy and human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. See how the length of the average working week has been decreasing in the USA: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8c/boLUsfqNlsI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-06-09+at+11.23.36+AM.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8... (Source: Univ of Gröningen and Univ of California, Davis) This is due to technologal innovations.
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WisNorCan 8y ago
The only thing that made less sense than Uber focusing on trucks (Uber Freight, AV Trucks) is Uber Elevate (flying cars). The days of Uber testing crazy, new ideas is over. The downside is that some of them actually worked. I can't see Dara ever green lighting Eats, which is now a great business. Note that Dara & Expedia completely missed the AirBnB phenomenon and had to play catch up many years later.
- jy1 8y ago
  Eats is the biggest success for uber besides ridesharing. It's got huge potential.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    The market Eats is in has huge potential, but Uber had lots of competition in that market and no moat.
h4b4n3r0 8y ago
How about we start with self-driving _trains_ that don't fly off the rails when some train engineer ignores the speed limit, and don't run into each other due to mis-routing. That'd be a good start for this whole "self driving" thing.
1k 8y ago
Article didn’t actually say why they’re shutting it down. Is the tech not feasible? With the Otto lawsuit settled and Levandowski gone it should have cleared the way. Focusing instead on self driving cars doesn’t make sense.
- a3n 8y ago
  > Article didn’t actually say why they’re shutting it down. It did. They want to consolidate limited development resources, and flesh out the tech in the easier car segment before then applying it to the superset truck segment.
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mlacks 8y ago
I suddenly have the urge to research "Why was an interstate system built vice an interconnected railway system?" I'm guessing that the auto industry lobby team was stronger than the rail lobbyists, even though at this point it seems like the rail was the better choice economically.
- bsilvereagle 8y ago
  One of Eisenhower's goals for the Interstate system was building emergency takeoff/landing strips for aircraft.
- DoctorBit 8y ago
  For wartime use. Military convoys might need to go off-road or around road damage.
macrael 8y ago
Is this in any way related to the Levandowski lawsuit? The thesis of that suit was that Uber only bought Otto to get a hold of Levandowski and his Google knowledge...
mymythisisthis 8y ago
Instead of fully automatic it would be good if they could be remotely operated for a short period of time, this would give the driver a chance to check their; phone, paper work, pee in a bottle.
yani 8y ago
I think they should focus on just one segment at a time and this is a good decision by them. They have the market to put self driving car in use but they cannot do the same for trucks.
oblib 8y ago
I think to do this right (safely) we need to start looking at how to integrate roads with self driving cars and trucks and at vehicle to vehicle communication. At some point there needs to be standards set for these kinds of things and, really, the sooner the better. I think we, as consumers, would be better served with a vehicle that could safely drive down the highway for long distances right now than a car that can drive us to work and back on city streets 10 years from now. And if we integrate roadway to vehicle communication from the highways outward the transition will be more efficient, especially for trucks.
- kahnjw 8y ago
  I agree road and vehicle to vehicle comm is important, but the work being done now by these companies is comparatively much more important. If there is an implementation bug on either side of one of these integrations or if the communication medium is bogged down, then what? These systems must be able to handle diverse and unpredictable situations without being able to communicate directly with other agents in the environment, and must be able to act safely relying solely on their own percepts.
pcarolan 8y ago
It seems like a smart transition technology would be truck driving roads. Basically install sensors on major freeways for longhaul routes which allows the road to take the wheel. You could have on/off ramps for this so people could take over the last mile.
edshiro 8y ago
Since autonomous driving technology is not there yet, I believe truck OEMs should focus on ADAS to enable lane keeping and lane change on highways only, as this is the easiest part of the job. Drivers would be require to intervene as soon as the truck exits the highway. I presume this is what Tesla will do with their trucks although I am very concerned by their very dubious marketing when it comes to autonomous driving technology.
mlang23 8y ago
I wonder how long it will take until public press will admit that the autonomous driving hype was just that, a hype to generate investor money. We aren't there yet, it was obvious already a few years ago when google and tesla began to push the media.
- foota 8y ago
  From what I've heard in the news, waymo seems to be fairly far along.
bitL 8y ago
Hmm, so the only self-driving part of Uber that was working gets shut down and put under dysfunctional part. I love corporate politics...
amarant 8y ago
so all of that Levandowski kerfuffle was for nothing? dear me, what a waste!
ocfx 8y ago
Uber is so incompetent as a company. Hurr we're not smart enough to figure this out and profit of it so we're throwing it away.

467 points by mark-ruwt 8y ago

iampims 8y ago

It’s kind of surprising, I always imagined self driving trucks to be a more profitable business and “easier” challenge.

griffinkelly 8y ago
I agree, particularly with the huge demand for truck drivers, a hybrid model, allow the self driving to take over on the expressway/long haul, it could quickly become profitable pretty easily.
fullshark 8y ago
Perhaps the road from tech demo to minimal viable product is a lot longer than we think.
Fomite 8y ago
Surprises me as well. From the people I know in trucking related industries, they all thought that was clearly an important market and a prime adoption route.
philwelch 8y ago
From a technical standpoint, a lot of the effort is probably duplicated, except trucks are heavier and less maneuverable so they have some added challenges.
- valuearb 8y ago
  They also have regulatory issues, loading and unloading issues, safety issues. How do you deal with a self-driving truck thats just had it's load shift in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from human help? It's not even close to the same effort as self driving cars, which is already so hard they might be a decade away.
rtkwe 8y ago
If you limit the trucks to only highway driving and design depots for them they might be easier but I think once you start trying to drive them on smaller roads there's a lot of issues that crop up. First and foremost is that there's a lot more vehicle to keep modeled and the dynamics of how to drive the cab to safely maneuver the trailer might require a way better model of the environment and the position of the trailer.
- josh2600 8y ago
  Why wouldn't Uber just do long haul to a distribution point near a city and hire drivers for the last mile?
  - ellius 8y ago
    Seems like a brilliant way to make use of a semi-idling workforce.
  - griffinkelly 8y ago
    I think the big question in this game becomes to you want to be a logistics company, or do you want to become a technology company? Also, they don't let any Tom, Dick or Harry get a CDL, so that's a bit of a roadblock. Not like its too hard though.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    Building all those distribution points would be fairly expensive and time intensive, a smaller market, and would still require contracting/employing a lot of medium distance drivers for the last X miles. 'Last mile' here is probably on the order of 20-50 miles at least with hundreds of distribution hubs.
    - UncleEntity 8y ago
      Most of the big carriers already have the distribution points set up all over the place with a bunch of local drivers covering the last mile. I (sort of) worked for Swift ~10 years ago and a lot of what I did was "drop and hook" at regional terminals or big warehouses. It was kind of uncommon to live (un)load -- mostly just drop the trailer I brought in where they told me, pick up an empty/loaded trailer and be on my way. When I ran reefers it was totally the opposite, super rare to not have to live unload. A lot of the big places would have pre-loaded trailers waiting but delivery points were usually much smaller so didn't have a bunch of space for trailers to sit around. And then there were the times when I was live loading produce in the middle of a (literal) field...
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aardvark291 8y ago

Does this mean Otto is being shut down?

sjroot 8y ago

This is surprising to me as well. I have seen first-hand how tedious it can be to find reliable truck drivers, particularly in the Midwest. I am eager to see how this industry shifts in the next couple decades.

arijun 8y ago

I've always felt that self driving trucks make the most economical sense to automate. A self driving truck would get to its destination faster (saving money) and without the need for a driver (saving money). And the majority of their time is spent on relatively predictable interstate roads, not the chaotic roads of a busy downtown, so they'd be simpler to automate. Otto (the self-driving truck company that Uber bought and is now shuttering) was the first I'd heard of that. It's a bit sad that they're shutting down.

Klover 8y ago
Not to mention that it can drive 24/7 when necessary, turning it into a mobile freight train.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  Self service at the gas station?
  - Klover 8y ago
    I think that if you can figure out self driving trucks, you can figure out keeping it fueled as well. As a quick and easy solution I would imagine large enough fuel tanks on the truck itself, and a couple of gas stations with people fueling the trucks at places. One for every large industrial place would already make it very widespread. Another solution would be mechanical arms attaching to the truck.
    - snerbles 8y ago
      See Shell Oil's SmartPump...from 1997: https://robotnews.wordpress.com/2006/04/07/service-robots-shell-smart-pump-2/ https://robotnews.wordpress.com/2006/04/07/service-robots-sh...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    Worst case, it signals a human fueler in advance of it's anticipated need to stop for gas, and the fueler meets it and handles fueling. Over time, though, building a network of compatible automated fueling stations to support the trucks makes sense, and you can use data from the trucks for siting decisions.

dontreact 8y ago

Could it be that losing the self driving car market to Waymo is more of an existential threat than not being first in the trucking business?

amarka 8y ago
That's a really good point. I also wonder if the cyclist accident changed the mood and/or culture at Uber when it comes to autonomous vehicles. I have to be honest that it would absolutely gut me inside to know that my software caused a death.
- ghein 8y ago
  When you're designing or building some things you are just GOING to kill people. The right decision in designing a car (centre of gravity, stopping distance, thickness of gas tank) WILL kill many people. Incompetence killing people is one thing (bad spec for o-rings, Therac 25 programming leading to massive radiation dose) but in some programming domains you just are going to make decisions that end badly. If you make the right decisions you'll kill fewer people than the alternative but still some are going to die.
- cdolan 8y ago
  I understand your point but the software didn’t exclusively cause the death. The software was known to be unreliable. In that way it did contribute to the person’s death. But so did the driver tasked with correcting the vehicle (who was watching Hulu), the technicians who disabled emergency brakes, and the company culture/management that thought this was safe in the first place. On a side note, my iPhone X knows when I’m looking at the camera to use FaceID. If I look away, am asleep, or otherwise occupied, it won’t open the phone. I’m not sure why Uber doesn’t use similar technology, in conjunction with steering wheel sensors to identify hands on the wheel, to force operators to stay alert. This seems particularly important if the software is unreliable.
  - bjl 8y ago
    If the software was known to be unreliable, then it shouldn't have been on the road. Everyone at Uber who worked on that project shares the blame.

fmpwizard 8y ago

I think the sad result of this story is that they are going to keep going with the self-driving car technology. During the investigation into the fatal crash accident they had, they showed how reckless they are. It would be great if they learned anything from the death of that person and rethink QA and decisions, but I doubt it. Time will tell.

TillE 8y ago
I really thought they'd pull out of self-driving tech after that. It's insane that they're right back on the roads a few months later. There's no way that's enough time to be sure your broken software isn't going to kill again.
- ghostly_s 8y ago
  It certainly isn't responsible. But it's their only moonshot route to profitability, so innocent lives be damned.
  - charmides 8y ago
    Did you know that 1.3 MILLION people die in car accidents on a yearly basis? There are extremely good reasons to believe that a mature, self-driving car industry will lower that figure by orders of magnitude. It is a shame that there have been a few accidents now that the technology is in its infancy, but it is very short-sighted to wish that Uber halts its experiments and delays the technology from taking off.
    - deleted 8y ago
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- tjoff 8y ago
  Software didn't do anything wrong. Emergency braking was disabled and relied on the human driver. It is just another example of how assisted driving (such as tesla autopilot et al) is much more dangerous than nothing at all - driver disconnects and isn't paying attention, disaster is only a matter of when.

ebikelaw 8y ago

Soon to be followed by: Uber shuts down, full stop. Sure, Softbank shoveled another shipload of money into the gaping maw of this capital furnace, but they're still burning it. Now, in addition to a tragically bad main business, they also don't have the fairy tale about how autonomous vehicles will eventually make them win.

valuearb 8y ago
Nope, this is actually a sign of Uber finally having adult leadership. Dara Khosrowshahi has only been there 9 months but he's doing an outstanding job, getting Uber's priorities straight and refocusing the company. And their core business is a fantastic business. Bookings is still growing faster than 50% annually. It cut it's burn rate to $300M last quarter, despite the bleeding at dozens and dozens side projects like Trucks, Eats, etc, and still has $6B in the bank. Dana is getting them laser focused on their core business again, and they'll be profitable before you know it.
- UberThrowaway13 8y ago
  Are you at Uber? Speaking as someone who is at Uber, I wouldn't say this is the case at all. Dara's successes have largely been on the PR front (huge successes), some good partnerships and an exit in SENA which was probably the right move given circumstances but shouldn't have happened in the first place. Things he hasn't done: 1) Kept Uber moving faster than competitors 2) Hired necessary leadership (CFO, CMO, CPO [he tried but the guy he hired originally was a total fraud. Huge swing and miss], etc.) 3) Driven focus on anything other than loyalty which is itself shaping up poorly 4) Gained back market share 5) Kept the best leaders. Losing Aaron Schildkrout alone was a massive loss, but there's been PLENTY of other leaders taking their sabbaticals and then quitting Turning to Eats, if we got rid of that (no way we would) we would lose the most dynamic and fast moving part of our business. It's the only place that still has the talent and structure of Uber 1.0 but without the awful cultural problems.
  - valuearb 8y ago
    I might be wrong on Eats, but I'm not wrong on the rest of the side businesses. And Dara has gotten the most important things right in the few months he's been there. You don't have choices in keeping foreign subsidiaries if your predecessor put the business on the route to bankruptcy, you shed what you have to shed before your cash on hand gets so low you lose all leverage in keeping the business financed. And if Aaron Schildkrout was so great, why was he working for Travis Kalanick, Stockholm syndrome? Why would you work for someone who constantly tarnished the company brand you needed in order to succeed in your job? It really sounds like Uber needs a complete house cleaning of it's entire upper ranks. You can play the "I was just following orders" card, but it also disqualifies you from being a true leader.

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TaylorAlexander 8y ago

Waymo is developing a self driving truck. With Uber out of the game, there’s more upside for Waymo.

tsycho 8y ago

Meanwhile, Waymo is expanding into self-driving trucks, saw them on 101.

valuearb 8y ago

The new CEO continues to impress. When he took over, Kalanick had Uber in something like a hundred side-businesses, a massive waste of focus, effort, brand and capital. This isn't the first or will be the last black hole side venture Dara is getting Uber out of. And he's already established his 100x better at PR and building/protecting the brand than Travis was. Uber never needed to be in the automated trucks business, there are zero synergies with their core business, and it's not even clear that will ever be a good business to be in. Is Uber Eats next on the chopping block? That would probably be my choice.

lhorie 8y ago
Eats? I don't think so. I heard it's one of the fastest growing verticals at Uber.
- valuearb 8y ago
  It is, and it's huge. It's 10% of their revenues now. Which means it's burning more cash than any other vertical at Uber by far. Why does Uber need to fund this "business" for years to come? How does it benefit them to keep throwing money at it? Answer: It really doesn't. It's a huge distraction that might never be profitable.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    Wouldn’t using drivers who are already on the road, who drive to point A to pick up a person and drop them off at point B, make perfect sense to pick up food at point A and drop it off at point B? And considering food doesn’t take a pool spot, they could do everything simultaneously while picking up people. It makes perfect sense to me.
    - valuearb 8y ago
      You have $6B left. Building out ride sharing will cost more than $6B. So will building out Uber Eats. What'll it be, ride sharing, eats, or more dilution? Oh, and one of these business you are the clear #1 in, and the other, you have a chance to be #2.

newnewpdro 8y ago

Having experienced a winter car accident on a highway involving a semi truck where the truck wasn't damaged but my car was totaled, I am extremely grateful the truck stopped and its driver allowed me to wait in the heated cab while waiting for police to arrive. The idea of all these massive trucks autonomously operating on our highways strikes me as a very dystopian future. I appreciate the humans in the machines accompanying me on cross-country road trips. Without the truckers, much of these vast spaces will become far more desolate and dangerous to travel through. I'm fine with technology assisting truckers, but am hopeful there will continue to be a requirement of people being present with ultimate authority over the vehicle.

cdolan 8y ago
Great point. Out of curiosity, what happened in the accident that the driver was comfortable inviting you into his car? In many environments/scenarios that would seem risky, particularly after a traumatic event like a car accident.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  He had almost crashed into me by suddenly changing into my lane on a snow-covered highway. I braked to avoid the collision, he swerved back into his lane having seen me brake, but my car rotated from the too-agressive braking. I was able to prevent a spin, instead limiting it to some highway-speed unpleasant fishtailing, but the whole ordeal had brought my car awfully near his trailer which was now next to my car again due to his decelerating. There was a lot of snow/slush accumulated between the lanes, and this kept pulling the right side of my car closer to his trailer, regardless of what I did, before the tires of his trailer struck the rear corner my car, violently forcing my car under the trailer, shattering the driver and passenger windows from the compression. At that point it was pure chaos from above and the steering wheel was ripped from my hands by a frontal impact with the landing gear. Somehow after what seemed like an eternity my car broke free from captivity under the trailer and shot out the side and off the highway, through the air, before landing on an embankment and sledding down to a frozen water retention pond where it circled a few times before coming to a stop in complete silence. I can't speak to what was going through the trucker's mind when I knocked on his passenger window and told him I was the luckiest person on the planet, and asked if I could wait in his cabin until the police arrived. My car was not even visible from the highway. He claimed to have no idea what happened, just that he saw my headlights disappear after he swerved. He had no idea my car had been under his trailer. Typing this story has been surprisingly emotional.

ergothus 8y ago

I'm generally pro-self-driving vehicles, and while I don't want to underestimate the difficulties, given how far related tech has gone in recent years I think it'd be a mistake to assume any of this is "never" going to happen. Despite this, I've been very nervously watching how truck driving and self-driving interact. I feel like city-to-city long haul driving will have a very rapid turnover once a certain tech threshold is hit. That threshold might be 5 years out or 20 years out or even further, but once it is reached a lot of jobs cease to be as profitable very quickly. Trucking is a major source of strong employment for those without a college degree. It is a significant source of employment all across the US, and there are related effects - entire small towns and certainly many small businesses rely on the income from truckers. (Everything here is about the US because I know too little about non-US to have even these vague reactions) Miners have become a synonym for workers displaced by technology - yet mining was always 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than modern trucking and took multiple generations to decline. Trucking could lose a big chunk of the industry in the course of a decade or less, to the tune of a million drivers or more. Having a million or more drivers that are suddenly unemployed or under employed would have a huge impact on the economy and public faith in the economy. Having this occur is predictable even if we can't predict when. Yet how many have given serious discussion on how to handle the reaction once this starts coming to pass? Could be confirmation bias on my part, but I see cases like this - where the effort proved to be more complicated than expected - to falsely create the narrative that this is not a real problem to consider, which just makes the eventual impact worse. EDIT: Please stop thinking I want to "protect" trucking or "stop" self-driving technology. I want neither - I just want us (society) to take advantage of the time when we know a change is coming but isn't here yet rather than deny it as "not yet real" and then wring our hands in despair over the consequences once it IS real.

charmides 8y ago
This attitude is nothing new. But I don't think people are seeing the big picture. Self-driving cars may cause a temporary spike in unemployment, but the economy and human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. See how the length of the average working week has been decreasing in the USA: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8c/boLUsfqNlsI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-06-09+at+11.23.36+AM.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8... (Source: Univ of Gröningen and Univ of California, Davis) This is due to technologal innovations.

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WisNorCan 8y ago

The only thing that made less sense than Uber focusing on trucks (Uber Freight, AV Trucks) is Uber Elevate (flying cars). The days of Uber testing crazy, new ideas is over. The downside is that some of them actually worked. I can't see Dara ever green lighting Eats, which is now a great business. Note that Dara & Expedia completely missed the AirBnB phenomenon and had to play catch up many years later.

jy1 8y ago
Eats is the biggest success for uber besides ridesharing. It's got huge potential.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  The market Eats is in has huge potential, but Uber had lots of competition in that market and no moat.

h4b4n3r0 8y ago

How about we start with self-driving _trains_ that don't fly off the rails when some train engineer ignores the speed limit, and don't run into each other due to mis-routing. That'd be a good start for this whole "self driving" thing.

1k 8y ago

Article didn’t actually say why they’re shutting it down. Is the tech not feasible? With the Otto lawsuit settled and Levandowski gone it should have cleared the way. Focusing instead on self driving cars doesn’t make sense.

a3n 8y ago
> Article didn’t actually say why they’re shutting it down. It did. They want to consolidate limited development resources, and flesh out the tech in the easier car segment before then applying it to the superset truck segment.

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mlacks 8y ago

I suddenly have the urge to research "Why was an interstate system built vice an interconnected railway system?" I'm guessing that the auto industry lobby team was stronger than the rail lobbyists, even though at this point it seems like the rail was the better choice economically.

bsilvereagle 8y ago
One of Eisenhower's goals for the Interstate system was building emergency takeoff/landing strips for aircraft.
DoctorBit 8y ago
For wartime use. Military convoys might need to go off-road or around road damage.

macrael 8y ago

Is this in any way related to the Levandowski lawsuit? The thesis of that suit was that Uber only bought Otto to get a hold of Levandowski and his Google knowledge...

mymythisisthis 8y ago

Instead of fully automatic it would be good if they could be remotely operated for a short period of time, this would give the driver a chance to check their; phone, paper work, pee in a bottle.

yani 8y ago

I think they should focus on just one segment at a time and this is a good decision by them. They have the market to put self driving car in use but they cannot do the same for trucks.

oblib 8y ago

I think to do this right (safely) we need to start looking at how to integrate roads with self driving cars and trucks and at vehicle to vehicle communication. At some point there needs to be standards set for these kinds of things and, really, the sooner the better. I think we, as consumers, would be better served with a vehicle that could safely drive down the highway for long distances right now than a car that can drive us to work and back on city streets 10 years from now. And if we integrate roadway to vehicle communication from the highways outward the transition will be more efficient, especially for trucks.

kahnjw 8y ago
I agree road and vehicle to vehicle comm is important, but the work being done now by these companies is comparatively much more important. If there is an implementation bug on either side of one of these integrations or if the communication medium is bogged down, then what? These systems must be able to handle diverse and unpredictable situations without being able to communicate directly with other agents in the environment, and must be able to act safely relying solely on their own percepts.

pcarolan 8y ago

It seems like a smart transition technology would be truck driving roads. Basically install sensors on major freeways for longhaul routes which allows the road to take the wheel. You could have on/off ramps for this so people could take over the last mile.

edshiro 8y ago

Since autonomous driving technology is not there yet, I believe truck OEMs should focus on ADAS to enable lane keeping and lane change on highways only, as this is the easiest part of the job. Drivers would be require to intervene as soon as the truck exits the highway. I presume this is what Tesla will do with their trucks although I am very concerned by their very dubious marketing when it comes to autonomous driving technology.

mlang23 8y ago

I wonder how long it will take until public press will admit that the autonomous driving hype was just that, a hype to generate investor money. We aren't there yet, it was obvious already a few years ago when google and tesla began to push the media.

foota 8y ago
From what I've heard in the news, waymo seems to be fairly far along.

bitL 8y ago

Hmm, so the only self-driving part of Uber that was working gets shut down and put under dysfunctional part. I love corporate politics...

amarant 8y ago

so all of that Levandowski kerfuffle was for nothing? dear me, what a waste!

ocfx 8y ago

Uber is so incompetent as a company. Hurr we're not smart enough to figure this out and profit of it so we're throwing it away.