Has Uber killed off its self-driving trucks?

&quot;Uber Freight&quot; was supposed to be a freight forwarder, a booking service for cargo. &quot;Uber for semitrailers&quot;, if you will. Call for a truck and driver, and someone comes, connects to your trailer, and takes it somewhere. There are already other companies offering that service. There&#x27;s no one dominant player, so Uber might be able to muscle in.<p>Uber registered with the US DOT as a freight forwarder, not as a trucking company. Freight forwarders are carriers, even if they don&#x27;t own any trucks. They have financial responsibility for the load getting to the destination in good condition. Uber doesn&#x27;t get to claim they&#x27;re just a booking agent.<p>This service doesn&#x27;t seem to have launched. But that&#x27;s what previous reports said Uber Freight was.

As a German the self driving company Otto is really confusing. It doesn&#x27;t only have the same name but also almost exactly the same logo as Otto, the decades old and second largest online retailer in Germany:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.otto.de&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.otto.de&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Otto_(company)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Otto_(company)</a>

I hope not. After the Budweiser &#x2F; Uber test I had an idea for a film script.<p>Red necks with pre-electronic cars and an improvised EMP device are running around hijacking self driving beer trucks.<p>I was thinking it would be kind of Fast &amp; Furious style.

I walk past the Uber&#x2F;Otto trucks every day (three or four are kept on Harrison St in San Francisco between 3rd and 4th), and while the trucks are still their with their very visible lidar&#x2F;cameras&#x2F;etc, in the last week they&#x27;ve removed all mentions of Otto from the trucks (previously they had the Otto branding on the doors).

I thought the logic of pursuing self-driving trucks was that it was generally easier than self driving taxi services:<p>- Mostly highway miles (or you could arrange it to be so) - Fewer weight requirements - Better economics (a greater % of the economy is dependent upon trucking logistics than taxi services)<p>This isn&#x27;t to say that there&#x27;s a big master plan of making a trucking company, more that making a self driving trucking company is a very practical step on the path to full autonomy.

It&#x27;s not exactly news that the Otto team went straight to work on cars after the acquisition.<p>Nor is it news that Levandowski and Kalanick hatched this scheme while Levandowski was still with Google. (read the second from top comment): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12315205" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12315205</a>

Uber is likely keeping a low profile with its autonomous initiatives until the Waymo lawsuit blows overs.<p>I&#x27;m sure we can expect big things from them as soon as that lawsuit ends.

Wouldn&#x27;t it be disastrous to do so?<p>Elon Musk said that Tesla will be releasing an electric truck in the later part of this year [1].<p>Of course, self driving capabilities will be added afterwards.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t it make sense for Uber to have this very same capability as well?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CgMqaDlPONA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CgMqaDlPONA</a>

lol dozens of paragraphs of speculation, and then Uber directly denies it at the very end. Talk about a waste of a read. This pretty much summarizes most blog articles these days.