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Uber decided to abandon its autonomous truck program to focus on its driverless car projects, announced Monday the American group.
"We decided to stop the development of our autonomous truck program and to advance exclusively on "autonomous" cars, said Eric Meyhofer, head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group, in an email to AFP.
"We believe that concentrating the energy and expertise of the whole team on (the car) is the best way to go, "he added, even as Uber announced in March to start rolling out autonomous trucks in the United States to transport goods on long distances
Uber nevertheless continues its activities in traditional road transport, with its application Uber Freight, which since 2017 connects truck drivers and companies wanting to transport goods, says the group. 59003] Uber had launched into the autonomous truck by buying the startup Otto in 2016.
Co-founded by a former Waymo engineer (autonomous driving subsidiary of Alphabet / Google), Otto had found himself at the heart in February, Waymo accuses his ex-employee of robbing him of self-driving technology, which ended up in the hands of Uber when he bought Otto.
The case ended by mutual agreement, Uber agrees to pay Waymo nearly $ 250 million and promises not to use the patents in question.
In addition to driverless cars, Waymo is also working on autonomous trucks and has begun testing on the road a few months ago.
Uber announced last week timidly resume his tests of autonomous car on public road, but in manual mode, after a test stop following a fatal accident involving one of his cars mode autono in March in Arizona.
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