Is Uber’s Vision of Self-Driving Cars Fading Away? Or is it Still in Progress?

Dara Khosrowshahi (the new chief executive officer of Uber) has made many changes and decisions in Uber that has impacted the company in both a positive way and a negative way. But recently, a visit to Pittsburgh has changed the minds of the Uber team and made them rethink on the decision taken on shutting down the money-losing autonomous vehicle division. The group including the CEO visited the operation center at Pittsburgh and during the visit, they were briefed on the entire operations on autonomous vehicles. After hearing the progress update the CEO along with the rest of the team was quite impressed. Also, it is the same case in Arizona’s branch as well. After this, the entire decision makers in Uber were quite satisfied and had their minds set on continuing the project even further.

After few days of the summit, one of the autonomous cars of Uber hit a woman who was passing by while she was pushing her bicycle across the street in Tempe, Arizona. As a result of a massive hit, the women died and to add to this problem the video that was recorded showed that a distracted safety driver failed to react at that time. Surely, this wasn’t intentional, but the driver should have had his eyes on the road and time had its call on the lady that fatal day.

This incident had thrown Uber’s self-driving car idea back to its attic. It was suspended in locations like Tempe, Pittsburgh, and Toronto. After many months a huge division took place between the ones who wanted to sell the inventory and equipment with the ones who still feel self-driving cars are Uber’s future. Let us see how things turn out in the future.