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Category: Uber

Uber Freight bets big on AI tools to grow its business

Three years ago, as the pandemic caused chaos for companies big and small, Colgate-Palmolive’s chief supply chain officer Luciano Sieber orchestrated a “logistics blitz.”  The result gave Sieber a better understanding of how Colgate-Palmolive moves its products around the world. But it stuck Sieber with another problem: too much data.  About a year ago, Sieber…

Uber eyes B2B logistics push in India through state-backed open commerce network

Uber is entering India’s growing B2B logistics market by extending its partnership with the Indian government-backed nonprofit that aims to break the domination of the e-commerce duo Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart and widen digital commerce in the South Asian nation. On Monday, the ride-hailing giant announced it will soon launch its B2B logistics service through…

TechCrunch Week in Review: Coinbase gets hacked

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got tons of news for you this week, including a hack at Coinbase; YC thinks Google is a ‘monopolist’; layoffs at Microsoft; and much more. Have a great weekend! Uh-oh: Coinbase says that customers’ personal information, including government-issued IDs, was stolen in a data breach. The hackers demanded…

TechCrunch Mobility: Google’s Gemini is coming to your car, chaos comes for Luminar, and the Amazonification of Uber 2.0

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! OK, who placed their bet on General Motors being the landing spot for Aurora co-founder and chief product officer Sterling Anderson? Not me. But here we are.…

Uber to introduce fixed-route shuttles in major US cities designed for commuters

Ride-hail and delivery giant Uber is introducing cheap, fixed-route rides along busy corridors during weekday commute hours in major U.S. cities – one solution to a world that feels, for most people, more expensive everyday.  Starting Wednesday, riders in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco will be able to save…

TechCrunch Mobility: Tesla denied ‘Robotaxi’ trademark, Aurora loses a co-founder, and tariffs start to take a toll

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Remember last week when Aurora met a major milestone — just squeaking by under its own deadline — and launched a driverless self-driving truck service? Welp, this…

Uber turns to Chinese companies to snap up robotaxi market share in Europe, Middle East

Uber announced its third partnership with a Chinese autonomous vehicle company this week, revealing the ride-hail and delivery giant’s appetite for global domination in the emerging robotaxi sector. Uber said Tuesday it would work with Guangzhou-based Pony AI, which late last year went public on the Nasdaq at a $5.25 billion valuation, to launch robotaxis…

Uber and WeRide set their robotaxi sights on 15 more cities

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide plan to expand a commercial robotaxi partnership and bring the service to another 15 cities over the next five years. The expansion comes five months after the two companies launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi.  The companies said the expansion will include cities in Europe. Under…

Uber’s latest autonomous vehicle partner? Chinese startup Momenta

Uber announced Friday yet another autonomous vehicle partnership as it leverages its dominant ride-hail and delivery position while relying on partners to supply the self-driving tech it isn’t building in-house. Today, the lucky startup is Chinese self-driving firm Momenta. The tie-up comes a day after Uber added Ann Arbor-based May Mobility to its roster of…

May Mobility to launch robotaxis on Uber platform this year in Texas

Startup May Mobility plans to deploy its autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform by the end of 2025, starting in Arlington, Texas, as part of a multi-year partnership. The tie-up with Uber offers May a chance to grow beyond offering shuttles within campuses and planned communities, while Uber adds May Mobility to its growing roster…

Uber, Volkswagen pair up to launch robotaxi service in US with self-driving, electric microbuses

Volkswagen of America and Uber on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to launch a commercial robotaxi service — using autonomous electric VW ID. BUZZ vehicles — in multiple U.S. cities over the next decade. The companies expect to launch a commercial service in Los Angeles, the first city on the list, by late 2026. VW…

Uber customers can now earn Delta SkyMiles from rides or deliveries

Delta SkyMiles members in the United States can now start earning points when they ride with Uber or order delivery through Uber Eats as part of a recently announced exclusive partnership between the two companies.  The tie-up with Delta is designed to further align the ride-hail giant with airport travel, which has historically been a…

Feds accuse Uber of charging customers for subscriptions without consent

The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit Monday against Uber, alleging the ride-hail and delivery giant charged customers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent. The lawsuit also claims Uber failed to deliver the savings promised in its subscription service and made it unreasonably difficult for users to cancel despite its “cancel anytime”…

India’s Uber-rival BluSmart appears to suspend service in wake of EV loan probe

BluSmart, India’s all-electric cab-hailing startup that was once seen as an emerging rival to Uber, appears to have suspended service in some cities just as the country’s market regulator launched a probe into Gensol Engineering, the publicly listed company that shares two of its co-founders. The cab service, which had been operating in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru,…

Testing the Uber-Waymo robotaxi, Rivian goes hands-free, and Travis Kalanick has AV FOMO 

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! For regular readers of TechCrunch Mobility, you may be wondering, “Why did this newsletter land in my inbox on Friday?” Folks, we’re moving days in an effort…

TechCrunch Mobility: Testing the Uber-Waymo robotaxi, Rivian goes hands-free, and Travis Kalanick has AV FOMO 

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! For regular readers of TechCrunch Mobility, you may be wondering, “Why did this newsletter land in my inbox on Friday?” Folks, we’re moving days in an effort…

Travis Kalanick thinks Uber screwed up: “Wish we had an autonomous ride-sharing product”

Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber, made it clear on Wednesday: he believes the company’s decision to abandon its autonomous driving program was a mistake. Said Kalanick at the Abundance Summit in L.A., “Look, [new management] killed the autonomous car project we had going on. At the time, we were really only behind Waymo…

How Uber’s new product chief is gearing up for robotaxis

Uber executive Sachin Kansal has a reputation for dogfooding — the tactic of using one’s own products and services to root out problems and make improvements. As he ascended Uber’s executive ladder over the past eight years, Kansal ratcheted up 700 trips delivering food or people to their destinations. Lengthy reports, often dozens of pages…

Uber users in Austin are getting matched with Waymo robotaxis

Uber users in Austin now have a choice between a Waymo robotaxi and a human driver. The two companies officially launched Tuesday the “Waymo on Uber” robotaxi service in Austin as part of a partnership that has deepened in recent months. The launch comes just days before SXSW, the annual tech, music, film, and comedy…

Tesla applies for ride-hail permit in California — but there’s a catch

Tesla applied for a permit with the California Public Utilities Commission to operate a transportation service in the state — a required first step if the automaker wants to eventually operate a robotaxi service there. Tesla’s application for a transportation charter-party carrier permit was first reported by Bloomberg. TechCrunch has independently confirmed with the CPUC…

Waymo has doubled its weekly robotaxi rides in less than a year

Waymo is logging more than 200,000 paid robotaxi rides every week, according to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who shared the stat about the tech giant’s subsidiary on X. Waymo commercially operates robotaxis in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. The 200,000-weekly trips milestone is notable for a company that was providing only 10,000 rides a…

Uber sues DoorDash, alleging anti-competitive tactics

Ride-share giant Uber filed a lawsuit Friday against DoorDash, accusing the delivery outfit of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners into exclusive deals. Uber alleges in the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court of California, that its chief rival bullied restaurants into only working with DoorDash. Uber claims that DoorDash, which holds the largest share of…

Another robotaxi operation heads to Texas and Archer scores $300M for its defense mission

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Raise your hand if you’re exhausted by the firehose of information coming from every direction. Yeah, me too.  At TechCrunch, we’re focused on helping readers (that’s you!)…

Waymo just popped up on the Uber app in Austin ahead of robotaxi launch

Uber customers in Austin may notice a new offer when they open the app and hail a ride: an invitation to signal their interest in a Waymo robotaxi. For now, this doesn’t translate into a Waymo picking them up. But it will soon. The “interest list,” which launched Wednesday, is part of a partnership between…

Delta SkyMiles members can now earn miles riding with Uber, ending its deal with Lyft

Uber announced during CES 2025 a multi-year exclusive partnership with Delta Air Lines that allows SkyMiles members to earn miles when they ride with Uber or order delivery through Uber Eats in the United States. The deal means an end of Delta’s partnership with Lyft. The Uber partnership will launch in the spring, giving Uber…

At CES 2025, Uber teams up with Nvidia to scale autonomous driving faster

Uber will use Nvidia’s new generative world model simulation tool, Cosmos, and cloud-based AI supercomputing platform, DGX Cloud, to support the development of autonomous vehicle technology, the companies announced at CES 2025. Cosmos is being marketed to robotics and autonomy companies as a tool that generates physics-based videos from a variety of inputs, including 9,000…

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi resigns from self-driving truck startup Aurora’s board

Dara Khosrowshahi is resigning from the board of autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation, citing a desire to focus on his ongoing responsibilities as CEO of Uber and reduce external board commitments, according to a Friday regulatory filing. Khosrowshahi’s resignation was effective as of Tuesday. Aurora says Khosrowshahi’s decision to leave the board was not…