Travis Kalanick thinks Uber screwed up: “Wish we had an autonomous ride-sharing product”

Travis Kalanick, the previous CEO of Uber, made it clear on Wednesday: he believes the corporate’s choice to desert its autonomous driving program was a mistake. Stated Kalanick on the Abundance Summit in L.A., “Look, [new management] killed the autonomous automotive undertaking we had occurring. On the time, we had been actually solely behind Waymo however most likely catching up, and we had been going to cross them in brief order . . . I wasn’t operating the corporate when that occurred, however you recognize, you might say, ‘Want we had an autonomous ride-sharing product proper now. That might be nice.’”

Uber bought its self-driving unit in a reported fire sale to the self-driving tech developer Aurora in 2020, three years after Kalanick was pressured to step down. On the time, it made sense; autonomous driving was bleeding money, and Uber had already spent a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on the trouble. Now, Waymo’s self-driving vehicles are tooling across the Bay Space, Los Angeles, Phoenix and popping up in new markets.

Waymo not too long ago partnered in Austin with Uber, and Uber is betting its platform can be essential in rising the service. However enterprise is enterprise, and partnerships falter. If Waymo decides it doesn’t want a intermediary, Uber, as soon as the way forward for transportation, may discover itself caught in reverse.