Uber's self-driving car project aborts. The Californian company has in fact decided to say goodbye to a project that started five years ago and on which it was betting a lot, to the point of having invested 2,5 billion dollars in it: but the division ATGs (Advanced Technology Vehicles), created to study the application of artificial intelligence to driving and to revolutionize not only the business of Uber (which was born as ride sharing) but the entire mobility of the future, it was no longer sustainable. Although in fact ATG still has a valuation of 7,2 billion dollars in the last quarter reported a loss of $303 million, also due to the difficulties in carrying out tests during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In addition, some of these tests have created major problems in recent years: in 2018 in Arizona, an Uber self-driving car hit and killed a pedestrian, and the court recently convicted of manslaughter the person who was in the car to supervise the safety of the vehicle. Uber was cleared, but this decision created a dangerous judicial precedent and above all forced the company to interrupt the tests in Arizona and move to Pittsburgh. Now the sharing economy giant, founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick, has decided to say enough: it sells ATG to Aurora, a startup specializing in robocars in which many former engineers and managers of Google, Tesla and Uber work, which in fact exchange of the business will obtain 26% of Aurora's capital, in which it will invest 400 million dollars.
The news was reported by the Financial Times, which also specified that Aurora will take over half of Atg's employees (which are now 1.200), thus doubling its workforce, and that the current CEO of Uber, the manager of Iranian origin Dara Khosrowshahi, will sit on the Board of Directors of the startup founded in 2017 and which among its lenders also includes giants of the caliber of Amazon and Hyundai. This of Atg is the second major sale recently made by Uber, which had already gotten rid of the bike sharing company Jump. Now the business goes back to its origins, i.e. to the "private taxi" service, e will increasingly focus on home delivery of food with Uber Eats.
