A fork in the road Uber’s vision of self-driving cars begins to blur

The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — After Dara Khosrowshahi took over as Uber’s chief executive in August 2017, he considered shutting the company’s money-losing autonomous vehicle division. A visit to Pittsburgh this spring changed that.

In town for a leadership summit, Mr. Khosrowshahi and other Uber executives were briefed on the state of the company’s self-driving vehicle research, which is based in Pittsburgh. The group was impressed by the progress its autonomous division had made in testing driverless cars there and in Arizona, according to three people familiar with the ridehailing company, who were not authorized to speak publicly. They left the meeting energized, convinced that Uber needed to forge aheadwith self-driving cars, the people said.

But days after the summit, one of Uber’s autonomous cars struck and killed a woman who was pushing a bicycle across a street in Tempe, Ariz. Video from the March 18 collision showed a distracted safety driver failing to react in time as the vehicle barreled into the pedestrian,Elaine Herzberg.

The incident threw Uber’s autonomous vehicle efforts into flux, immediately forcing the suspension of its self-driving car tests in cities includingTempe, Pittsburgh and Toronto.

Months later, Uber’s executives are divided over what to do with the autonomous business, according to the people familiar with the company. While one camp is pushing Mr. Khosrowshahi to seek partnerships or even a potential sale of the unit, known as the Advanced Technologies Group, a rival contingent is arguing that developing self-driving technology is crucial to Uber’s future, the people said.

Mr. Khosrowshahi remains undecided, the peoplesaid, although he has expressed a desire to partner with other companies on autonomous technologies. In recent months, Uber has started talking with a few auto manufacturers about potential partnerships, including supplying Uber’s autonomous driving technology for use in Toyota’s minivans, according to one person familiar with the talks. Toyotadeclined to comment.

The internal debates are unfolding at a time when many companies can ill afford to pause on autonomous technology given stiff competition from carmakers and other tech companies. In recent months, top engineers have left Uber’s self-driving project for lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Uber’s self-driving cars recently returned to the road in Pittsburgh but with human drivers at the wheel, meaning employees are driving around like any other car on the road — except the vehicles are