Ride-sharing

Uber customers can now be matched with a robotaxi operated by Avride in a small, 9-square mile section of Dallas. The vehicles, Hyundai Ioniq 5s, still have safety drivers for now as part of a phased introduction, with fully driverless operations coming later. The fleet will also be small at first, but will grow to “hundreds” over time, the company says. This is Uber’s latest robotaxi deployment in the US, following the partnership with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta.

The workers, part of Project Sandbox, were one month into an expected three month stint, Business Insider reports. Around a dozen people were involved, though it’s not clear how many were cut.

The company has announced a UK trial with autonomous delivery company Starship, starting in Sheffield and Leeds. It’s Uber’s first delivery bot trial in Europe, after tests in various US cities.

The California governor, who is already angling for a presidential run, has a stack of AI regulation bills he can veto before October 12th. Newsom has a slew of tech donors — and may want more tech money for a presidential run. OpenAI is also staffed up with Newsom-affiliated operators. So will Newsom sign the bills?

The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit alleging that the ridehail company “routinely refuse to serve individuals with disabilities,” including people with service animals and stowable wheelchairs. Uber settled a previous lawsuit with the Biden administration over a similar issue, but clearly this is an ongoing problem with ridesharing.

Takeout on demand first expanded to groceries, and then to other retail, but the branding hasn’t always kept up. With Uber Eats now delivering from Best Buy, that opens the door to some pretty strange dinner orders,

That’s how frequent Uber received a report of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in the US between 2017 and 2022, on average, according to a new investigation by The New York Times. That amounts to a staggering total of 400,181 Uber trips that involve reports of assault or misconduct. Uber’s official number of “serious sexual assault and misconduct” over that period is only 12,522; the company estimates that 75 percent of those 400,000 cases involve “less serious” incidents of harassing comments or flirting. Still, Uber says its working on the problem, but anonymous employees say the company is ignoring promising solutions.

After a ride, you’ll be able to mark a driver as a favorite and Lyft will prioritize matching you with them when possible.

Uber and one of the ridehail company’s many robotaxi partners, Wayve, announced today that they will begin testing Level 4 autonomous vehicles in London on public roads as soon as 2026. The timing coincides with the UK Secretary of State for Transport’s announcement of “an accelerated framework for self-driving commercial pilots, following the Automated Vehicles Act becoming law last month. Trials have been underway for a while, but always with a safety driver in the front seat. Now the companies can remove the driver from the vehicle, but in doing so they will accept full liability if the vehicle crashes.

Waymo’s robotaxis are available exclusively on the Uber app in the Texas capital, and today the ridehailing company provided some color on how that partnership is going since its launch in early March. Waymo’s approximately 100 vehicles in Austin are “busier than over 99% of all drivers in Austin in terms of completed trips per day,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in prepared remarks during the company’s Q1 earnings call. He added, “So far, this launch has exceeded our expectations.”

Uber and China’s WeRide are currently operating a small fleet of autonomous cars in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, and plan on launching soon in Dubai. Now they expect to deploy robotaxi service to 15 additional cities, some of which will be in Europe, over the next five years.

Momenta will deploy its autonomous vehicles on Uber’s ridehailing platform starting in 2026, initially with safety drivers on board. For availability, Uber is only saying they’ll be in “international markets outside of the US and China.”