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On May 9th, the foreign technology website Backchannel wrote an article to discuss whether Uber has cut off its drone truck project. The article said that the company's CEO Travis Kalanike recently shared new news about Uber Freight trucks, but judging from the behind-the-scenes situation, its plan to reshape the freight technology seems to be over.
The following is the main content of the article:
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick released the company’s first Uber Freight truck in Pittsburgh yesterday. In his tweet, he demonstrated the first step in his company’s plan to connect shippers and truck drivers and extend the common mode to cargo.
On the surface, this news seems to boost Uber’s ambition to take over and even automate human traffic and freight and logistics. After all, who would have forgotten the small, unmanned car truck startup that it bought back last year for $680 million? That company is now caught up in legal disputes with Google.
Driverless truck project to cancel?
However, Uber’s drone truck project was actually slowing down as a result of a series of incidents after Uber’s acquisition of the startup called Otto. At a hearing at the US District Court in San Francisco on Wednesday, Waymo accused former employees Anthony Levandowski and Uber of using Otto, an empty shell company, to disguise their rapid defection to the beating company's embrace. move. "Uber and Lewandowski made a cover-up plan for what they are doing now," Waymo's lawyer said to the court. "They created a story for the public." In other words, Uber is not particularly interested in trucking. - Its huge acquisition was mainly to get Otto's team.
If Waymo's words are true, then the drama of this event can be said to have never been seen before. Otto was founded in May last year when it showed a beautiful video of a driverless truck driving on the Nevada highway. "We will continue to intensify our testing." Otto co-founder Lior Ron said to Backchannel at the time.
In the months following Uber’s acquisition of Otto, until the fall of 2016, the car giant had been developing its driverless truck. But judging from a series of recent evidence, Uber's focus on driverless trucks is only superficial, even if the accusations made by Waymo are false. Even today, its unmanned trucks have no trace of semi-finished products. (The truck in the photos Karannick posted on Twitter last night has no driverless device.)
Federal records show that Otto's 18-wheeler trucks currently travel less mileage than ever before. The core engineer team has been redistributed to its driverless car project. Ambitious plans for a nationwide pilot project have been postponed or cancelled. Perhaps more persuasively, e-mails obtained in accordance with public records laws and regulations show that one month before Otto’s mystery emerged, Lewandowski was looking to the company to provide the future of unmanned urban taxi services.
In other words, just as Kalanik was advocating his company's involvement in the latest projects in the freight field, as the company displayed its ambition for driverless trucks, there was a conflicting story at the same time. Otto, the pearl of the company's portfolio of Uber acquisitions, has been drifting away from unmanned freight when the world is not aware of its existence.
Has Otto's development center changed?
On April 11, 2016, Lewandowski, Otto and Uber signed a cooperation agreement, which is an important step taken by Uber to acquire this young company. At that time, Otto had only a handful of engineers who were operating silently at Lewandowski’s home in Palo Alto. Two weeks later, Steve Hill, executive director of the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development, sent an email to the Vehicle Administration (DMV):
“Just wanted to inform you that a company intends to operate a fully automated passenger transportation service on a fixed route somewhere in Las Vegas around the end of this year... This company is led by Anthony Lewandowski. Leadership. All this is confidential information."
Bruce Breslow, director of the Nevada Department of Industry and Commerce, responded by saying, "Sounds like the Google project that Anthony has been trying to establish for the past four years." But a few weeks after Otto made a public appearance, demonstrating its drone When it came to truck videos and interviews with various media outlets, it focused on completely unmanned freight - nothing to say "transport passengers."
In August last year, Uber announced that Otto and its more than 90 employees will be returned. Kalanike appointed Lewandowski to take charge of Uber’s entire driverless car project. The project covers passenger vehicles, distribution and trucking.
However, Otto did not continue testing trucks in Nevada as Ron said, and did not even apply for a test license. Instead, the company began working with a driverless vehicle certification center in the suburbs of Las Vegas in September last year, which provides licenses for Uber’s driverless taxis and Otto trucks to operate in the state. .
The DOT records show that Otto's trucks are constantly appearing throughout the fall. According to the regulations, all commercial motor vehicles are required to undergo random roadside inspections. Otto's trucks conducted four inspections in October and carried out eight rounds throughout the year. That month, Otto's trucks completed their first paid freight shipment: a batch of Budweiser beer was shipped in Colorado under the escort of a police car. “We very much want to explore further: more types of highways, more weather conditions, more modes of transportation, and apparently more cooperation in the future,†said Ron to the technology blog The Verge. In November, an Otto truck made several trial runs in Ohio.
However, Uber later released the accelerator pedal. Public records show that Otto had contacted the state's government department in August to deploy its trucks in Texas, but according to Darran Anderson, director of strategy and innovation at the State Department of Transportation, the company said. The company has never followed its plan. "After being acquired by Uber, Otto ended up with our e-mail exchange." He said, "I guess Uber's acquisition should have interrupted our connection, or it has changed the focus of development."
According to Randy Cole of the Ohio Expressway, the company also stopped seeking tests in Ohio. "Our facilities successfully met their expectations ... but we did not have the specific timetable for them to restart the test," said Cole. The company also did not make further demonstrations in Colorado. From the LinkedIn data point of view, all the engineers listed in the Nevada test facility application form still work in San Francisco.
Court documents
An anonymous source close to the company revealed that Uber has basically stopped the development of drones. Although the public evidence is somewhat fragmented, the signs of this change can be found in Uber's court documents on its laser radar technology (the main controversy in the Waymo case).
For example, James Haslim started working at Otto in May 2016. “Not long after joining Otto, my team started a laser radar project for drones... The project was named Spider.†He wrote in a file as part of the lawsuit, “Uber acquired Otto in August 2016. Since then, I have been responsible for the technical development of Uber Lidar sensors."
However, Spider is not suitable for driverless cars. The device is rather bulky and may weigh as much as six times the weight of market leader Velodyne's commercial laser radar device. "The weight of Spider's design and the extra components to install Spider's finished product on the roof of the passenger vehicle is likely to exceed the Volvo XC90's rated payload," Hassling wrote. Uber uses the XC90 to launch its unmanned car test in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Arizona.
Hasling's team began to develop a lightweight Lidar device called Fuji specifically for the car. He said to the court, "Fuji is a lidar sensor with two optical resonators ... can be adjusted to different top angles to capture the required field of vision for the application of driverless cars." Fuji needs not to exceed Running at a low speed of 35 miles, this speed range is suitable for city taxis, but it is not suitable for long-distance trucks on the highway. A recent document submitted by Uber stated that it "does not intend to restart the abandoned Spider project."
In other court documents, Uber described Otto as "a company founded by Anthony Lewandowski that initially focused on driverless trucks." It does not say what the company is currently focusing on. But in early April, Uber decided to erase all mentions of Otto and stated on its official website: "We have no longer used the Otto name and have integrated all our driverless car work into Uber's advanced technology department."
However, the most convincing signs have become more straightforward. Otto's trucks have not reached the peak of the mileage reached in October last year - not even last year's mileage in May. Public records show that the company has not received any roadside inspections across the country since this year, indicating that its trucks are very active on the road.
Should give up
For Uber, a company that is facing a lot of trouble, drones may have quickly become unsustainable distractions. In January, Uber lost 200,000 users in a weekend due to strong dissatisfaction caused by Karanike’s joining the US President’s Trump’s team of economic advisors. In February, the company exposed internal employee sexual harassment scandals, while Karanike's video of Uber drivers was posted online. In March, several executives left the company and Uber was exposed using its Greyball software to circumvent and deceive regulators — it is now being investigated by the US Department of Justice.
The progress of the company's driverless car project is also not much better. During a brief trial in San Francisco in December last year, Uber's Volvo unmanned model was found to have a red light. In the court documents, Uber admitted that it has not successfully deployed any lidar sensors. It fears being marginalized in “an area that could be the most profitable industry in history.†The unmanned taxi fleet launched by rivals General Motors and Waymo is also much better than Uber's. To put it another way, for Uber, it is ridiculous to invest time and energy in the development of driverless trucks.
"If Otto is still a driverless truck, Karanike is much more stupid than I think." Stefan Seltz-, founder and CEO of driver company Starsky Robotics, Stefan Seltz- Axmacher said, "If Uber loses the battle for driverless taxis, it will no longer exist." Starsky Robotics already operates a freight business in Florida.
Flying Taxi Project
Uber has a very good reason to concentrate its technological capabilities on developing its core personal transportation business. It also seems to feel that developing a driverless car is not difficult: It recently held a three-day conference called Uber Elevate, which is intended to explore what it calls "on-demand urban flying" services and flying taxis in the crowd. It announced cooperation with multiple cities, property owners and companies to create and support electric aircraft capable of flying vertically and landing.
"On-demand flight services have the potential to radically improve the mobility of cities and give people the time they spend in daily commuting," said Uff Chief Product Officer Jeff Holden. "We think we have The ability to provide this service at about UberX's price."
The company insists that the fact that the company has a new project of urban flying does not mean that Otto's drone truck dreams to end. A spokesperson for Uber told Backchannel, “We have two products and two dedicated product teams collaborate on the development of cars and trucks under the leadership of the same leader. Our truck team is working hard to improve the technology, and we look forward to it soon. Can show our progress."
Uber said it will publicly display its first flying taxi service in 2020. As for when its drone truck will be put into commercial use, the company did not give a timetable. (Lebang)
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