Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash
- 6 years ago
Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash
As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona, according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by
and two people familiar with the company’s operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it.
The Phoenix area was added a year ago, and quickly became the company’s main testing ground, with 400 employees
and more than 150 autonomous cars driving local roads because of "favorable regulatory environment, favorable weather conditions,” according to a company document.
Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said
that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble.
Around October, Uber merged the two groups to get to a point where it could offer a truly driverless car service to customers “as quickly as possible.” The customer pickup service was mostly dropped so drivers could focus on accumulating miles
and gathering data to help the system become more reliable.
When Mr. Khosrowshahi took over as Uber’s chief executive, he had considered shutting down the self-driving
car operations, according to two other people familiar with Mr. Khosrowshahi’s thinking.
Uber’s goals in Arizona were mentioned in internal documents — Arizona does not have reporting requirements —
and it has not been testing self-driving cars in California long enough to be required to report them.
As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona, according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by
and two people familiar with the company’s operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it.
The Phoenix area was added a year ago, and quickly became the company’s main testing ground, with 400 employees
and more than 150 autonomous cars driving local roads because of "favorable regulatory environment, favorable weather conditions,” according to a company document.
Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said
that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble.
Around October, Uber merged the two groups to get to a point where it could offer a truly driverless car service to customers “as quickly as possible.” The customer pickup service was mostly dropped so drivers could focus on accumulating miles
and gathering data to help the system become more reliable.
When Mr. Khosrowshahi took over as Uber’s chief executive, he had considered shutting down the self-driving
car operations, according to two other people familiar with Mr. Khosrowshahi’s thinking.
Uber’s goals in Arizona were mentioned in internal documents — Arizona does not have reporting requirements —
and it has not been testing self-driving cars in California long enough to be required to report them.