Uber’s Autonomous Vehicle Strategy: Slow Their Adoption

A decade ago, then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said he saw autonomous vehicles as an existential threat to the ride-hail company's business model.

“What would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by,” Kalanick told Business Insider.

In the years since, Uber has settled on a strategy that, rather than see it build and operate its own self-driving cars, puts it on track to become the place where riders can get connected with any ride, driven by a human or robot. “We think there are going to be many AV players around the world, and we want to be the go-to commercial platform for all of them,” now-CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told investors in 2024. Since then, the company has signed agreements with more than 25 major robotaxi players, with driverless vehicles from Waymo, Nuro, Baidu, and Volkswagen’s MOIA either available or soon to be available on the Uber app in several global cities.

Now, according to documents viewed by WIRED and another obtained through a public records request, Uber’s lobbyists are pushing to build that strategy into law. The company’s representatives have pressed lawmakers to deploy autonomous vehicles on what it calls “hybrid networks,” where human drivers work alongside robots as the new tech grows.

In New Jersey, a lobbyist representing Uber took the strategy a step further, circulating legislative language that would, for a period of three years, require any platform offering driverless ride-hailing services to have human drivers serve 85 percent of its rides.

The language would likely prevent self-driving vehicle developers, including Waymo, Zoox, and Tesla, from operating their own ride-hail apps in the state—effectively forcing them onto another ride-hail app if they hope to enter the market and limiting competition for Uber, the country’s reigning ride-hail leader.

A representative for Uber pitched a version of the proposal to New Jersey state senator Andrew Zwicker, according to his chief of staff, Ayla Rios. Zwicker is the sponsor of a bill currently being considered by the state legislature that would establish New Jersey's first set of rules governing self-driving cars on public roads. The Uber lobbyists’ proposed language restricting standalone robotaxi-hailing apps is not currently part of the bill, which could come up for a vote this fall.

The New Jersey bill is the first proposed in the nation that would limit the operation of Tesla’s robotaxis, because it requires AV developers to use multiple sensors to power its software, rather than just cameras, as Tesla’s technology does. It would also require vehicles to be operated in emergencies using steering wheels and brake pedals, which purpose-built robotaxis like those from Zoox do not have.

In Washington, DC, where autonomous vehicle developers, including Waymo, are engaged in a pitched, months-long battle to allow robotaxi services to operate in the district, Uber representatives also sought to ensure that “hybrid networks” would be the future of ride-hail.

A bill introduced by city council member Charles Allen in April would allow driverless services on DC’s public roads under certain conditions. In an email sent more than a week before the introduction of the legislation and obtained by WIRED through a public records request, Uber lobbyist LáVita Gardner thanked an Allen staffer for committing to allowing ride-hail companies like Uber to participate in the district’s autonomous vehicle program. “Allowing for hybrid networks will be critical for a smooth transition that supports both technology and human drivers,” Gardner wrote. (The DC bill will be the subject of a hearing on Monday, and has not yet come up for a vote.)

In a written statement to WIRED, Uber spokesperson Noah Edwardsen says that the company supports the expansion of autonomous vehicle technology, but that policy proposals from the AV industry have been “largely unworkable” because they have failed to address workers’ issues and or “have tried to cynically lock out competitors and create monopolies.” Edwardsen says that the industry's failure to pass autonomous vehicle regulations in several states this year, including Maryland and New York, is evidence that “clearly it’s time to try a different approach.”

Edwardsen says the New Jersey proposal was “a compromise we thought could help get something across the finish line” given labor unions’ opposition to the autonomous vehicle bill. He says Uber is fighting in Washington, DC to guarantee that ride-hail companies can participate in the proposed autonomous vehicle program alongside AV companies that run their own apps.

“Both the New Jersey and DC proposals that we’ve opposed have elements that would reduce AV competition,” he says.

In a written statement, Waymo spokesperson Ethan Teicher says the company “does not support efforts to limit AVs to specific types of networks, and we would welcome changes clarifying that different types of networks can operate.”

Zoox didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Waymo and Uber are business partners, with Uber offering exclusive access to driverless Waymo rides through its app in Atlanta and Austin. But evidence of a strained relationship has leaked into public in past months, as Business Insider has reported. In late April, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli posted on X a video of what he called a “scary Waymo moment,” when one of the company’s self-driving vehicles appeared to come close to hitting a public bus. Waymo and Uber discontinued a more limited pilot partnership in Phoenix last month.

Waymo leads the driverless vehicle race in the US. It says it provides 500,000 rides per week in eleven metros, and plans to expand to even more this year, including London.

Hybrid Networks

The lobbying strategy is an escalation for Uber, but consistent with how the company has publicly pitched the best and safest way to introduce autonomous vehicle technology into ride-hail services.

In May, the company published a policy paper arguing that a “phased transition” to driverless vehicles will protect riders, drivers, and cities themselves. Hybrid networks, the company argues, ensure that human drivers (and the businesses powered by them) will have a role to play in the years ahead. “The path forward should be built deliberately, informed by evidence, and grounded in shared responsibility,” the paper says.

In prepared testimony set to be delivered in front of the DC City Council on Monday, Uber director of autonomous vehicles and AI policy Harry Hartfield is set to say that AVs and human drivers are already competing directly in San Francisco and Los Anglees, where driver earnings declined last year. “One AV in California now performs roughly the work of four drivers,” he will say, according to the prepared testimony.

The appeal to caution is an about-face for Uber, which spent its early years exploiting the gray areas in cities’ and states’ taxi regulations and sometimes, as reported by The New York Times, outright deceiving lawmakers as they tried to crackdown on growing ride-hail services. Uber has for years drawn criticism from labor unions and drivers themselves for insufficient pay, and for fighting to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees entitled to benefits.

Uber resisted autonomous vehicle regulation as it attempted to build its own self-driving technology. In 2016, then-program head Anthony Levandowski shipped all of Uber’s testing AVs from California to Arizona after California regulators insisted it apply for a permit to test driverless cars there. Two years later, Arizona banned Uber’s self-driving cars after a testing vehicle struck and killed a woman. Uber officially shut down its autonomous vehicle program in 2020. The same year, Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing thousands of files from what was then Google’s self-driving car program, where he worked. (Levandowski was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2021.)

In a LinkedIn post published in May, after Uber released its “hybrid network” policy paper, Uber president and COO Andrew Macdonald acknowledged the ride-hail company’s new position on regulations “might feel ironic.”

“We didn’t engage enough with the societal implications or consider how the world outside the walls of Uber HQ felt about how we were going about building,” Macdonald wrote. “The consequences were well documented: regulatory battles and a corporate crisis that damaged trust for years.”