Waymo and Uber, previous legal foes and harsh opponents in the autonomous vehicle space, are collaborating to accelerate the adoption of driverless trucks. Waymo is incorporating Uber Freight, the ride-hail organization’s truck business, into the innovation that powers its autonomous big rigs.
This “long-term strategic partnership” will enable fleet owners to more rapidly send trucks equipped with Waymo’s autonomous “driver” for on-demand delivery courses presented by Uber Freight, the organizations said.
The declaration addresses a union between two of the organizations’ significant side projects. Waymo separates its autonomous projects into two divisions: Waymo One, its consumer ride-hailing service, and Waymo Via, which is centered around goods delivery in both trucking and local delivery formats. Uber Freight, which was launched in 2017, connects drivers with shippers, much similar to the organization’s ride-hailing application that matches drivers with those searching for a ride.
Waymo depicts the collaboration as a “deep integration” of each organization’s products, including a mutually developed “product roadmap” to outline how autonomous trucks will get conveyed to Uber’s organization once they are commercially ready. Up to that point, Waymo says it will utilize Uber Freight with its test fleet to better comprehend how driverless trucks will receive and accept delivery orders.
Yet, the partnership goes past beta testing each other’s innovation. Waymo said it will save “billions of miles of its goods-only capacity for the Uber Freight network” in a capacity commitment intended to highlight the seriousness of this partnership.
In the not-so-distant past Waymo and Uber were in a grueling standoff over the eventual fate of autonomous vehicles. In February 2017, the Alphabet-owned organization sued Uber and its auxiliary, self-driving truck startup, Otto, over charges of trade secret theft and patent infringement. Waymo looked for $1.4 billion and a public apology from Uber, however, the ride-hail organization dismissed it as a non-starter.
The case went to trial for almost a year, however, finished quickly when the two sides reached an unexpected settlement agreement. Uber later conceded that it misappropriated a portion of Waymo’s tech and promised to permit it for future use. Anthony Levandowski, a previous Google engineer and the organizer behind Otto, was sentenced to 18 months in jail for taking Waymo’s trade secrets however was subsequently pardoned by former President Donald Trump.
There is no notice of past indiscretions in the declaration. Uber had been developing its self-driving truck as a feature of its bigger interest in autonomous innovation however later off-stacked it to Aurora, a startup established by the previous head of Waymo when it was only Google’s self-driving vehicle project. Expanding costs, in addition to the misfortune in Arizona when an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a passerby, constrained Uber to take back its AV project.
Waymo has made a flurry of arrangements lately pointed toward developing its nascent trucking business. The Google spinoff has said it has no plans to possess or work its fleet of trucks and on second thought will work with truck manufacturers, carriers, and representatives to coordinate its innovation into the business of hauling freight.