Uber Pulls Self-Driving Cars From San Francisco, Sends Them To Arizona (sfgate.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Uber is moving its self-driving pilot to Arizona, one day after the California Department of Motor Vehicles ordered the autonomous vehicles off the roads in San Francisco. "Our cars departed for Arizona this morning by truck," an Uber spokeswoman said Thursday afternoon in a statement. "We'll be expanding our self-driving pilot there in the next few weeks, and we're excited to have the support of Governor Ducey." After starting its San Francisco pilot on Dec. 14, the ride-hailing company angered the mayor and officials at the DMV by refusing to get a permit to operate its self-driving cars. And so, around noon on Thursday, a fleet of Uber self-driving cars passed through the South of Market area on the backs of several flat-bed trucks. Commuters gawked at the fleet with their distinctive hoods, backing up traffic as the convoy slowly drove by. In a statement Thursday, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey called California's regulations "burdensome" and said Arizona welcomes Uber's self-driving car pilot with "open arms." "While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses," he said. It is unclear which city -- or cities -- the cars are headed to.

Comments

Re: What Could Go Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What's up with all the trans hate on Slashdot lately?

Re:I prefer regulations that promote safe operatio

[PopeRatzo]

If the goal of the regulation was to chase away people who are doing cool stuff, this regulation worked.

Since Uber is currently losing $700 million per quarter, and they just backed out of their Chinese investment which means the loss is probably more like $1.2 billion per quarter, I don't think we'll have Uber around to worry about much longer.

The real reason they didn't want to register their cars in California (they'll still have to register them in Arizona, by the way), is that they would be required to report any accidents they were involved in to the state, and they didn't want the public to find out how shitty their robot cars really are.