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Uber’s Drive to Become the Kleenex of Robotaxis


It doesn’t matter who makes the tech—when you call a robocar, Uber’s mission now is to make sure you use its app.

“To them, it doesn’t really matter who ultimately succeeds,” says Sam Abuelsamid, who writes about the self-driving-vehicle industry and is the vice president of marketing at Telemetry, a Michigan research firm. The incident, for which federal investigators later found the ride-hail giant partially responsible, led to a suspension and then reorganization of Uber’s self-driving development effort. Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that Kalanick was back, and in talks to acquire the US arm of the Chinese AV company Pony.ai—with a financial assist from Uber.

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