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Self-driving Uber vehicle: Hundreds of millions of dollars invested
Photo: DPA / Uber
The driving service broker Uber is giving up the costly development of its own technology for self-driving cars.
The corresponding department will be taken over by the robot car start-up Aurora, both companies announced.
A sale price was not disclosed.
Uber is also investing $ 400 million in Aurora, which will be given access to the Uber platform as a strategic partner, and will receive a 26 percent stake in return.
Uber boss Dara Khosrowshahi, who has been in office since August 2017, is pursuing a comprehensive austerity course, but so far he has spared robot car development.
The corona crisis has now put Uber under pressure, with a loss of $ 1.1 billion in the last quarter and sales falling 18 percent.
Developing its own technology for autonomous driving has cost Uber hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years.
The project was pushed by the co-founder and long-time boss Travis Kalanick.
He brought on board Anthony Levandowski, a prominent developer from Google's robot car program, as project manager.
The Internet company then sued Uber with allegations that Levandowski had leaked confidential information on a large scale.
In the long legal battle, Levandowski was fired and Uber had to pledge not to use Google technology.
In connection with Uber's program, the only known fatal accident to date involving a robot car occurred in March 2018.
Behind Aurora, the buyer of the Uber division, are founders Chris Urmson, formerly chief developer of Google's robotic car project, and Sterling Anderson, formerly responsible for the "autopilot" driver assistance system at Tesla.
Among other things, Amazon invested in the start-up.
The Urmson and Anderson concept included using relatively few vehicles while Uber built a large fleet of test vehicles.
After Aurora failed to win Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler as partners, the company recently focused more on technology for self-driving trucks.
Car companies, industry suppliers, numerous start-ups and technology heavyweights such as Google parent Alphabet and Apple are currently working on technology for autonomous driving.
In the industry, cooperation and a streamlining of the market are expected.
Even before Uber left, there were steps in this direction, such as the takeover of the start-up Zoox by Amazon.
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fdi / dpa
