Uber Launches 'Uber Freight' Website To Prepare the World For Autonomous Delivery Trucks (inverse.com)

Uber has launched a website for a service called Uber Freight. While there are little details about the company's expansion from ride-hailing, Uber Freight is meant to prepare the world for autonomous delivery trucks, according to Inverse. From the report: Uber acquired a startup called Otto, which planned to bring the first self-driving trucks to market, in August. Since then the company has used its trucks to deliver 50,000 cans of beer and hundreds of Christmas trees in San Francisco. This new service won't use those trucks, at least not at the beginning. Instead it will function much like Uber's existing platform: Some people will sign up to drive items across the country, and others will join so they can send packages without having to sign a contract with established shipping companies. The service will likely bring "surge pricing" to trucking, too. Uber Freight could also help Otto's trucks by using data gathered from drivers on the platform. This would allow the self-driving vehicles to learn from experienced people while regulators figure out how to govern autonomous trucks and the technology catches up to all of the promises made by its creators. Uber Freight's launch coincides with growing interest in trucking from many tech companies. Nikola Motor Company wants to use tech to make trucking more environmentally friendly and appealing to millennials; Tesla's working on self-driving trucks; the list could go on. Uber told Inverse it's going to wait until the new year to elaborate on how the system works. "We don't have any new information to share at the moment," a spokesperson said, "but hope to in the new year so please do stay in touch." It looks like the future of trucking -- or at least one potential future -- is going to take a little while longer to make its debut.

Comments

is uber smart or stupid?

[Osgeld]

the way they have been behaving seems like they either

A) have a boatload of cash and dont know how to spend it
~or~
B) see the writing on the way and throwing shit at it, hoping it sticks to cover said writing up

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uber is projected to lose 2.6 billion next year. So, both.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[Somebody Is Using My]

I'm no expert in these things, but the best explanation I've seen for Uber's recent activities is that the company is over-valued for a taxi service (sorry, "ride-sharing service"), they KNOW they are over-valued, and are trying to justify that value by entering into other business areas. They are trying to position themselves not just as a transport company but instead as a tech start-up because once saner heads start looking at what their core business is, their price will drop like a stone. A taxi companies is not worth $20 billion, but a tech company that is developing its own auto-driving vehicles? The sky is the limit!

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[ShanghaiBill]

Uber's recent activities is that the company is over-valued for a taxi service

Indeed. You nailed it. The problem for Uber is that they, and many investors, assumed that ride-sharing would be like auctions or social media where the network effect would create a "winner-take-all" market like it did for eBay and Facebook. That didn't happen. Lyft is hanging in there, Didi clobbered Uber in China, there are several upstarts in India. There is little customer loyalty: I will gladly switch between Uber and Lyft to save a buck. There is not even any driver lock-in: many Uber drivers, and most Lyft drivers, have both apps, and take whatever fare pops up first. Uber is struggling to make enough profit to justify their valuation, and it is unlikely that ride-sharing will ever give one company pricing power. So their only option at this point is to shoot for the moon with projects designed to revolutionize transportation.

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I wish someone somewhere could find the nuts to prepare uber for reality. Yawn.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[tietokone-olmi]

My question is: are they turning a profit yet?

No? Rather, 600M$ in the red over 2016? Well, I'm not waiting for their IPO.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[mattwarden]

That's a pretty dim view. Perhaps you can say that people buying their stock on public markets are stupid rubes buying into hype, but before Uber was public, what was the compelling pitch to private investors that got them a $40b valuation in 2014?

Yes, yes, I know this is slashdot, so stupid VCs and dumb billionaires, etc etc. But let's get real. These firms ran numbers to get to $40b, and you think that pitch was competing with taxis, Lyft, and others?

You don't tell investors you're going to lose money for years without a pitch for an utterly transformative business plan. That's not: cheaper taxi! No, Uber was one of the first people publicly talking about autonomous vehicles being the next step. I remember, because it got them a ton of shit from Uber haters, who used the news to beat up on uber drivers. "Uber is telling you that you're a temporary inconvenience and they will get rid of drivers as soon as they can."

They bought Otto... out of desperation? Really? Doesn't it seem more likely that it is 100% in line with a transformative transportation story they've had from the beginning?

You know another hyped up story that lost money for years and years and years (and I think still is)? Amazon. Online bookstore. Then, f it, let's sell everything. We have some spare capacity in our servers, so let's rent that out too. How we shop is completely different now vs 10 years ago, and Amazon owns that. How we do infrastructure is completely different from what we did 5 years ago, and AWS owns that.

I think Uber saw an equally silly misuse of resources in transportation. You buy a $20k car so you can drive it for 90 mins a day, and the other 22.5 hours it is unused capacity. Trucking is massive, extremely complex, is very sensitive to efficiency and speed of delivery, and has some serious limitations from human drivers (so much so that laws had to be passed to force drivers to rest).

Now, almost no business sets a course and then powers straight ahead. It's fluid and involves reactions to market signals. But I think the narrative that Uber is lost and grasping at straws is really hard to swallow. No way do they get a $40b valuation in private funding rounds with a story limited to attacking taxis.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[ShanghaiBill]

Perhaps you can say that people buying their stock on public markets are stupid rubes buying into hype

Uber is a private company. The only investors (so far) are VCs. VCs may be stupid, but they are not rubes.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[ShanghaiBill]

My question is: are they turning a profit yet?

Pushing for profitability now would be foolish. Uber has plenty of cash, and plenty of runway. They need to push for growth. Profit can come later. The VCs didn't invest billions to get a small mildly profitable mom-and-pop business. They are looking for another Amazon or Google (which both endured years of little or no profit).

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

You buy a $20k car so you can drive it for 90 mins a day, and the other 22.5 hours it is unused capacity.

A car isn't "unused" just because you're not driving it at the moment. Its presence represents your ability to go anywhere you want at a moment's notice, at a very low cost, and without any big corporations tracking you everywhere you go. It's like saying health insurance is 99.9% useless because you only spend a tiny fraction of your life in doctor's offices.

A shared fleet of self-driving cars owned by Uber will never offer that same freedom, let alone the price. Maybe it could work for people who only ever leave the house to go to work and spend the rest of their lives locked up indoors staring at their phone, but it might shock you how little a percentage of the population actually falls into that category.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... how many shares did you buy?

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look up how much VC/IPO money was poured into Pets.com. (Admittedly an order of magnitude or so less than Uber, but still a shitload.)

These are the type of people who believed that offering free shipping on 50 pound bags of cat litter and dog food was a good business model.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[haruchai]

"Uber is a private company. The only investors (so far) are VCs. VCs may be stupid, but they are not rubes"

I think that statement is almost making mattwarden's case, that Uber always had a plan beyond cab-driving-and-pizza-delivery for everyone.
Problem for them is that there's so much legislation & so many forces at play in freight & transport that you can lose years & huge amount of cash trying to be the disruptor. Look at the history of Amazon, who wasn't limited (much) by what they could sell & to whom

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with your post, guess whats next a massive tax payer bailout for uber because jobs, trump and angry investors want their profit.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[tietokone-olmi]

Thing is, with subsidies to the drivers making up a majority of the 1.2B$ (I was wrong, 600M$ was just one Q of 2016!) deficit, once Uber hits market dominance it'll get antitrusted to the ground in all the countries where it hasn't bought the politicians. Or have to give up on those subsidies, thereby driving their drivers out of business.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[mattwarden]

Your insurance example is a terrible one, as it misunderstands what insurance is buying you. But I agree with you 100% on the freedom issues. I think it is inevitable that we will eventually have certain AV-only roads, and this bothers me because it's harder to opt out. Same is true with smartphones. I want to opt out, but it is very difficult to do so as life increasingly assumes you have one, and there is little and shrinking incentive to serve the market segment that doesn't.

But I don't follow your logic on how this counters an AV Uber's usefulness. It's possible today to get around where ever you want to go in most cities just using Uber. Your wait is 3-5 minutes most of the time, and that's today with a relatively small percentage of cars on the road being uber cars. I think I just profoundly disagree with you that the market segments interested in a shared car lifestyle vs owning their own car is too small to support an AV Uber. I think it's quite the opposite. People like you and me who care about independence and freedom and would be bothered by reliance on AV generally and AV Ubers even more so are the exception not the rule. Like I said, I worry that overtime we will be forced into extinction. The market desire for this is that strong.

I'm assuming you will disagree. But nevertheless, I think this is the story sold to Uber investors and why these moves into AV make sense (vs flailing).

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Mashiki]

More is likely. They lost $800m in the last quarter, more actually if they hadn't gotten an injection from said sale of assets/asset merger in China. In other words, they're likely on track to blow through $4-7B next year. What absolutely blows my mind is that they have given uber a valuation of $70B. That's more then GM, Ford or Chrysler and they make physical products, have credit/banking divisions, and own subsidiary companies in everything from trains and planes to data management. Hell that's half the valuation of Intel, and they're the backbone of the IC age. To say that Uber is overvalued is an understatement.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[dbIII]

But let's get real

It's a gold rush mentality. It's a very long way from normal reality while the boom holds. Consider for example how Uber has gotten away with breaking laws all around the world which would have landed established taxi companies in court. Should those laws exist? Perhaps not, a lot of them are truly anti-capitalist purchased monopolies, but still Uber getting around it by influencing political figures directly is not going to help us in the long run even if they are in the right on a few occasions, and Uber getting away with it doesn't help anyone else. It's not as if the person on the street can offer anything to people in politics to look the other way when laws are being broken.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[dbIII]

Problem for them is that there's so much legislation

They have either been ignoring that, buying their way around it or going for direct influence on politicians.
Remember last weeks story of them telling California to fuck off about licences for self-driving vehicles? They didn't win that one but they have won plenty of others.
You may have a point that with freight it will be harder to ignore the legislation as with taxis, but I doubt it. A lot of governments had a serious revenue stream from taxi licences but Uber has just rolled over a lot of them with almost no ill effects. IMHO freight legislation will be easier for Uber to ignore since governments make less money from it.
Get ready for third world style "traffic safety". Overloading, low bridges, whatever, rules are for other people.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[haruchai]

Get ready for third world style "traffic safety". Overloading, low bridges, whatever, rules are for other people

My tired old adage is that nothing changes until someone dies. The 1st Uber robot-truck that takes out several lanes of cars will see them sued, legislated and reined in right fucking quick

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Ralgha]

The difference is that freight legislation is not rooted in money, it's rooted in blood. The federal department of transportation won't let Uber ignore anything. They operate in a similar way to the FAA, neither is in it for money, and both could rightly be called overzealous, illogical, or misguided in many cases, but they don't look the other way when something makes a splash.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[dbIII]

My tired old adage is that nothing changes until someone dies

The bit to add to that is that consideration of safety fades over time so if nobody has died recently things slip. Sad, but I see it a lot.

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[dbIII]

The difference is that freight legislation is not rooted in money, it's rooted in blood.

Something the people in politics care far less about until there is a high profile death or a large cluster of deaths.

The federal department of transportation won't let Uber ignore anything

Indeed, just like the taxi regulation bodies didn't, but Uber went around them. I think they'll try the same again and possibly even get away with it for long enough. I think the department of transportation will get overruled just like the NASA engineers were over the o-ring failure. People in politics are demanding far more power these days and are happy to put the "little people" in their place to help out a donor.
I hope I'm being too cynical, but I really doubt that I am.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[jeremyp]

Yeah, there are four quarters in a year. Uber loses money at the rate of over $2 billion and has done for several years.

It's nigh on impossible to see how they can convert that into a profit: they sarge nothing more than a taxi company with an app.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[serviscope_minor]

Yes, yes, I know this is slashdot, so stupid VCs and dumb billionaires, etc etc. But let's get real. These firms ran numbers to get to $40b, and you think that pitch was competing with taxis, Lyft, and others?

Yes, *let's* be real. Let's take the case of Theranos as an example. They raked in a huge amount of VC funding on the back of promises. One VC (google ventures as it happened) thought to do some due diligence and send in some blood to Theranos and another company simultaneously to see if their magical testing machines worked. Guess what, they did not!

Apparently none of the investors $750 million thought to do this basic test.

Make no mistake: many VCs make very many stupid investments without the basics of due diligence. If you've spent any time in the SV VC scene you'll find you can't throw a rock without hitting someone whose idea of "due diligence" is "did the founder go to the same university as me".

The SV VC scene is really depressing.

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the usefulness of Uber depends where you live. In London where many houses were built pre car ownership (and thus don't have off street parking) and are now converted into flats (often with multiple flatmates living there) I think a car is a liability. I would use it for precisely two things, 1 shopping for large heavy items and 2 going back to my home town to see my family. For no 1 I tend to get deliveries currently (which can be a pain in the arse) and for no 2 I use a train or bus I'd I am feeling cheap. For moving around my city, you can't help but use public transport. Due to traffic, going 2 miles to the next "village" can take half an hour by road, it takes 7 minutes on a train (that runs at least every 15 minutes)

Re: is uber smart or stupid?

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Also "prepare the world"? What a bunch of bullshit. Besides managing to be both pretentious and useless at the same time, self appointed futurists are just annoying.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[mattwarden]

What a your argument, exactly? That a majority of VC deals look like Theranos? Your example of stupid VC investment isn't even responsive to the point of discussion, which is whether these investors wrote checks at a $40b valuation purely in the "better, cheaper taxi" pitch. Your example is about an impressive pitch that wasn't real. If anything, this seems to support my view that VCs got excited about something else in Uber's pitch, something much bigger than "better, cheaper taxi".

I am not making an argument that private investors are purely rational supermen. I'm just saying that the OP's suggestion that the move into AV cars and trucks is Uber grasping at straws as they realize the taxi market is smaller than I guess they thought previously... just doesn't pass the smell test. And one of the reasons it doesn't pass the smell test is the $40b private valuation by VCs. That's just too outlandish a valuation for a taxi story, and we have to believe not that VCs were fooled by a fake pitch, but that they got the "real pitch" of just taxi and still somehow got super excited and came up with absolutely ludicrous global growth numbers for that line of business. Sorry, I just don't think so.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[0100010001010011]

The 1st Uber robot-truck that takes out several lanes of cars will see them sued, legislated and reined in right fucking quick

Because that's what happened to Walmart after the Tracy Morgan crash?

In 2008:

• 123,918 large trucks and 13,263 buses involved in non-fatal crashes
• 49,084 large trucks and 7,123 buses involved in injury crashes
• 73,047 injuries in crashes involving large trucks and 16,760 injuries in crashes involving buses
• 74,834 large trucks and 6,140 buses involved in tow-away crashes
• 2,609 large trucks and 11 buses involved in hazmat (HM) placard crashes

The robots just need to beat those numbers and it'll be the humans that find themselves "sued, legislated and reined in right fucking quick".

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[fbobraga]

Get ready for third world style "traffic safety". Overloading, low bridges, whatever, rules are for other people

You are not speaking for Brazil (and for "general Latin America"): the legislation to achieve traffic safety is pretty good (European-like, I think...) - you are talking about region of India, right?

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[fbobraga]

Its presence represents your ability to go anywhere you want at a moment's notice, at a very low cost

Only after a several thousand dollar buy, right? And there's gas/ethanol/diesel/electric cost and parking fess (there's public transportation that "represents your ability to go anywhere you want at a moment's notice, at a very low cost", and for real low cost, in some cities though...)

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[fbobraga]

It's like saying health insurance is 99.9% useless because you only spend a tiny fraction of your life in doctor's offices.

No, it's not (what a terrible analogy!)

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[haruchai]

The WalMart crash was caused by a human who dozed off and charged with several counts of vehicular assault and one of vehicular manslaughter.
And he & WalMart were blaming each other back & forth. With a robot truck, all blame falls on the company.
Also Tracy Morgan is not one to garner much public sympathy especially after his joke about jerking off to images of Sarah Palin.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[haruchai]

Also Tracy Morgan is not one to garner much public sympathy especially after his joke about jerking off to images of Sarah Palin.

And I forgot he pissed off the left with his remarks that if lesbians are only pretending to love women because they only really hate men and if had a gay son , he'd "stab the little ni***r to death"

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[dbIII]

Very good point, the term doesn't fit but it's a convenient term for the geographically challenged so I lazily used it.

Re:is uber smart or stupid?

[tietokone-olmi]

It's almost as though traditional taxi business had the business part down, so that there's no more cream to be had off the top. So Uber is left trying to undercut the existing, profitable, business and its non-employee drivers at the same time, shouting "disruption! disruption!" into the sunset like so many noisy startup wankers used to do.

So I wonder how many countries they can take in this way in the coming two to three years.

just wondering

[rossdee]

How exactly does it deliver the package
Does it have an onboard robot to carry it to your front door?

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Air cannon :)

Re:just wondering

[ShanghaiBill]

How exactly does it deliver the package
Does it have an onboard robot to carry it to your front door?

TFA is not very informative, but judging by the accompanying photos, it looks like they will initially be doing long and short haul commercial trucking, and not to-the-home deliveries.

Re:just wondering

[mattwarden]

I'm sure we are talking dock-to-dock trucking. Humans (for now) on the loading end, and humans (for now) on the unloading end. Autonomous 24/7 operation in between.

Re:just wondering

[Osgeld]

it poops it out from a slow convener belt in the back (in order to not damage fragile items)

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the paperwork? Truckers do a lot more than just loading, driving and unloading.

A human driver will make sure you only unload what you are supposed to get and sign for it. That gets a lot more interesting if you have an autonomous truck with no driver.

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they'll have employees at each end, to supervise the loading/unloading. If it is a location with multiple deliveries/collections that can make sense. Another alternative might be to have compartments in the truck and only unlock the appropriate compartment when needed, with video cameras to record it in case of problems.

Re:just wondering

[tazan]

Yes, I can imagine a yellow freight type thing where they pull trailers from one terminal to another over a prescribed route. They already have special laws for them in some areas such as relaxing the maximum length. It seems like the easiest place to get automated trucking started.

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Compartments cost cargo space, cameras are not free, get damaged... having people at each end is not free.. meaning operating such a truck costs more than a normal one. As soon as that reaches the cost of a human driver the idea is dead.

That doesn't even cover all the little problems that can happen on the road that are currently fixed on the fly by the driver (blown tire, low oil, low water, for more ask a truck driver). If any little fault causes the autonomous truck to pull over and wait for someone to service it, things will slow down considerably.

Re:just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

It says "freight", not "parcel delivery".

Oh, great - just great

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm not sure what scares me more - the thought of Uber self-driving trucks cruising through red lights in major cities, or the thought of Uber long-haul freight trucks cruising down the highway with completely untrained drivers behind the wheel.

Re:Oh, great - just great

[ShanghaiBill]

the thought of Uber self-driving trucks cruising through red lights in major cities

To be fair, the Uber SDC recorded running a red light was under fully human control at the time. According the Uber, the driver has been fired.

Re:Oh, great - just great

[mattwarden]

We really are not talking about city driving here. In fact, they could take a huge leap by limiting AV trucks to interstate only, and requiring trained commercial drivers to take it the last x miles from the interstate to the dock site. The long haul in between is where 24/7 operation is a big gain.

Re:Oh, great - just great

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively have a driver in the truck at all times, and run the self-driving software at least for the 13 hours a day and one day a week the human can't legally drive. Team driving would no longer be necessary and all trucks could get across the entire country in about two days instead of three for teams and five for single operators.

PREDIKSI TOGEL

[Jagoantogel]

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Old Men Yell at Cloud

[0100010001010011]

"No one is going to replace my Horse. These cars are nothing but death traps".

Re:Old Men Yell at Cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Horses are smarter than autonomous vehicles. They instinctively avoid danger.

Re: Old Men Yell at Cloud

[backslashdot]

Say that to the thousands of people killed in the 1890s by horse & buggy accidents. One example:

North Adams, Mass., Aug. 30--Charles Davis, aged 41, a milk dealer, was thrown from his wagon, when his horse ran away today, and died three hours later from a fractured skull. He leaves a widow and three children.
Boston Journal, Boston, MA 31 Aug 1898

Re: Old Men Yell at Cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

That's horse AND buggy. Not just horse. And thousands over a decade (worldwide?) is less than the tens of thousands killed in one year in the U.S.

Commercial Trucking

[Anonymous Coward]

is filled with all kinds of rules. They don't seem to be too hot on the idea of following those.

Re:Commercial Trucking

[ShanghaiBill]

is filled with all kinds of rules.

A robot can be programmed to follow rules a lot more strictly than a human.

Some rules shouldn't apply to SDTs, such as the 11 hours per day driving limit. Robots don't need sleep.

Hmmm

[Casualposter]

With Uber's complete disrespect for the law and their unwillingness to abide by licensing and regulation in mind, I wonder how long they will last under the iron fist of the US DOT. The rules for freight make the rules around taxis rather simplistic. Freight isn't simple. It's not like letters where the most you can worry about is the occasional envelope filled with poison or box bomb and for the most part paper is getting moved from one spot to the next. Freight has restrictions. Some things are temperature controlled. Some are not. Some things are incompatible with other things. Some things are poisonous or corrosive, or both. It's a lot more complicated than simply showing up at Joe's Warehouse with a couple of buddies and a U-haul. There is a lot more to freight and logistics than having a truck and driver in the right spot at the right time. And when things are done wrong, the results can wind up on the news - in a bad way. I'm not sure that a robot can provide the proper information to first responders when the truck has an accident. And the driver has to be commercially licensed - not just some dude who shows up with his pickup truck. I really think that Uber trying to disrupt the freight industry in the same way they disrupted the taxi industry is a disaster for Uber, and for the unfortunate fatalities to come.

Of course, this could be Uber management scamming investors with vaporware.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long they will last under the iron fist of the US DOT.

No worries, Trump will just appoint Uber's CEO to be the Secretary of Transportation.

Re:Hmmm

[mattwarden]

A lot of what you list has to do with what goes on which truck. This is already highly computerized, and anyway not at all what Uber is making autonomous. As for your first responders example, there is huge potential for much more information to be much more quickly available to first responders than a human driver sifting through discarded cheeseburger wrappers for their printed document.

Getting an autonomous truck to negotiate interstates has got to be easier than getting a car to negotiate city streets.

Re:Hmmm

[drew_kime]

The rules for freight make the rules around taxis rather simplistic.

Truth. And people don't even know how much they don't know. For instance: Did you know that makeup and perfume are classified as hazmat? Do you know what the laws are for allowable weight per axle? Are there any guidelines for load balance front-to-rear or side-to-side? If current regulations limit how many hours a driver may be on the road continuously, how would you apply those limits to a "driver" sleeping in the back while the truck drives down the highway?

This shit ain't easy. And sure, some of it may have gotten overspecified, but just ignoring all the regs like they did for taxis isn't going to play for long.

Re:Hmmm

[SvnLyrBrto]

Haven't you heard? Travis Kalanick and Donald Trump are buds now. Kalanick signed went all-in and even kissed enough jaundiced ass to score himself an appointment to Trump's unofficial (And nicely exempt from Senate confirmation.) "Strategic and Policy Forum" shadow cabinet. Any DoT policies that inconvenience Uber ought to be gone in a year; along with federal highway funds for any state that doesn't play along.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

There are systems that do logistics and understand all these rules, there is plenty of automation in the trucking business already, nothing wrong with adding a few more bells and whistles.

Re:Hmmm

[DerekLyons]

With Uber's complete disrespect for the law and their unwillingness to abide by licensing and regulation in mind, I wonder how long they will last under the iron fist of the US DOT.

That was my thought too... Taking on the odd city, county, or state is one thing. Taking on the feds is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

Re:Hmmm

[dbIII]

There is less money for governments via freight laws that taxi ones.
I think Uber cracked the hard one first.

Either way I think Uber is going to cuddle up to politicians again but this time convince them that all those "tedious safety laws" just do not matter and are getting in the way of jobs (or hookers and blow for the politicians). The truly scary thing is that Banana Republic corruption shit that Uber has been pulling has worked just about everywhere with taxis and it probably will with freight as well.

Uber trying to disrupt the freight industry in the same way they disrupted the taxi industry is a disaster for Uber, and for the unfortunate fatalities to come.

In the long term it could be a disaster for everyone including Uber, but there could be a huge IPO and cashing out in the middle.

Re:Hmmm

[dbIII]

The sad thing is just like with the taxis it's probably just going to depend on who they donate to.

Re:Hmmm

[Casualposter]

You have to do both. The cities are where the products are going. So a truck has to be able to navigate New York City as well as I70 through western Kansas.

Re:Hmmm

[mattwarden]

This is a highly unimaginative view. AV truck stops at designated points (let's just use rest areas for now to keep it simple) closest to the destination city. Driver takes over the truck and negotiates the city to the destination point.

You are 100% wrong when you say AV trucks need to negotiate city streets. It would be expensive to get an AV truck to do this, and it's pretty damn cheap to have a human take it the last 30 minutes of the trip. To me this is clearly how AV trucking will work initially.

Good

[frovingslosh]

A delivery truck arrives with no driver. Self service, help yourself to what you want. What could go wrong?

Sure saves me the trouble of having to capture those pesky delivery drones.

Re:Good

[ShanghaiBill]

A delivery truck arrives with no driver. Self service, help yourself to what you want. What could go wrong?

Unlocking and opening the cargo door will require a PIN and a fingerprint scan, and there will be multiple cameras in the trailer, recording the unloading from several angles, so I don't think this will be a big problem.

Re:Good

[Joe_Dragon]

cell jammier or just stop the truck in a rural dead zone.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

... If all these are in perfect working order over the life of the truck. Have you take a closer look at commercial trucks lately? They accumulate dents and dings everywhere around the cargo part.

Cameras will be damaged sooner or later while loading or unloading, the Pinpad or finger print reader (how do they get the fingerprint anyway?) is exposed to the elements and might also get damaged when loading or unloading.

Re:Good

[frovingslosh]

how do they get the fingerprint anyway?

They just record whatever is on your finger when you make your pickup. If you have nothing extra on your finger and you don't find it an invasion of privacy to let a private company have a scan of your fingerprint then they have a record of it and can use that when they try to take you to court for being involved in an enhanced delivery. Personally I know a lot of people who would object to them scanning their fingerprint. Which will be interesting if the company is forced to make a second manned delivery or just fail to deliver. I also know people, myself included, who, when we know a delivery is coming, would go to the trouble of making a phony fingerprint just to screw with them. Of course, you're not really screwing with them if you just accept the delivery intended for you, so to properly show them the error of their ways will take extra effort.

insurance and liability isses who is going pay?

[Joe_Dragon]

insurance and liability issues who is going pay? when state property is damaged? And it's not like the courts will holdup an uber EULA.

When Sheriff Buford T. Justice hauling CEO to jail

[Joe_Dragon]

When will Sheriff Buford T. Justice be hauling the uber CEO to jail

I called it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Predicted this on this slashdot Amazon Is Secretly Building an 'Uber For Trucking' App, Setting Its Sights On a Massive $800 Billion Market

THE END OF UBER

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me, they don't have their shit together to even ATTEMPT getting into this market. Once a few drivers begin crashing and it turns up all over the news how semi's are killing whole families at a time they are an anally fucked -- Without using lubricant

Winner take all

[rsilvergun]

This is how the modern economy works. Buyouts, Mergers & Acquisitions, patent litigation and just plain old skullduggery mean that at the end of the day there's always only 1 man left standing. Maybe if you could convince people that all those "Burdensome Regulations" exist for a reason that wouldn't happen, but if the last election proved anything that's not happening.

Uber's planning on being that last man standing in the world of transportation. So is Google. And Amazon. And hell maybe even Facebook. The billionaires who run our lives have plenty of money to throw around, and they'll get it all back when the Mergers & Acquisitions finish up anyway.

So, given the reality of our modern economy and unchecked capitalism Uber is doing exactly what they should do. So are the billionaire investors. Pity nobody else is.

Re:Winner take all

[Osgeld]

600m in the red with 2.something billion in projected losses

that's why I ask, is it party town before the burning of Rome, or do they have something really worth while

I'm not saying it's Drones

[rsilvergun]

But it's Drones. Common, do you even read /.? If the Drones aren't ready yet, well... CNN just had a really scary article on the next frontier: remote workers. $.50/hr employees in Guatemala can do what AI can't.

Here's the thing: whatever else the future economy has in store for us, it's not employment. Not unless you're a member of the ruling class of investors, one of their (very few) slaves/lackies or one of the (even fewer) engineers who runs their machines. Remember, they don't need you to buy their crap when they already own everything.

Who needs to respect law

[rsilvergun]

when you have Arizona. Seriously, our local news was thrilled. "Their Loss is our gain" they said. What's a few traffic fatalities among people too poor to buy luxury cars with extra safety/crumple zones? amairight?

Seriously, I got stuck on the highway here in blinding rain once and kept getting overtaken by asshats going 80. Found out their Audis and BMWs have lane assist that keeps them in the lanes even when they can't see. Like one of 'em once told me: "Let'em hit me, I'm older and better insured". That's Uber in a nut shell.

They're in a race with Amazon

[drew_kime]

Like I said here:

This is Step 1

What is Uber for regular Uber doing right now? That's right, self-driving cars.

This "Uber for Trucks" is just Amazon getting all the shippers into their system so they'll be in the database with contracts already signed as soon as the self-driving trucks are ready.

I got the name wrong, but the play was right.

Remote control and monitoring

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they do this without some sort of remote control and monitoring. Especially for taxis. It's known and 100% proven that people will shit, puke, jerk off, and fuck inside taxis (in exactly that order btw). How can autonomous freight and taxis exist without remote monitoring?? I feel like when you start to shit there should be a voice that reminds you that you are not in a toilet.

Outsourcing 2.0 !?

[kiviQr]

If you think that training your replacement was bad, you at least got paid. Uber is getting paid by users and drivers (via commissions) to develop their AI - smart move. Normally it costs a lot to get professional user (drivers) to train neural network and to get all the traffic information.

Re:Outsourcing 2.0 !?

[fbobraga]

nice catch!

WAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's going to unload? If the customer does the unloading then what's the point.

Re: WAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay someone locally (on contract when rural or hired in a city) to unload. I am pretty sure plenty of Uber drivers would be willing. It will still be cheaper than paying a trucker.

It's been done. Uber are miles behind

[CaptainOfSpray]

8 months ago, Scania drove a platoon of autonomous trucks across Europe, 1600 km and 4 borders.

By the time Uber can do that, the truck manufacturers will have moved on, and Uber will be left behind again.

Re:It's been done. Uber are miles behind

[CaptainOfSpray]

Forgot to add link https://www.scania.com/group/e...

Uber is off mission

[HangingChad]

Uber started out as a simple middleman, matching up people with a car with people needing a ride. Now they're burning billions of dollars trying to shape the future of transportation. Instead of letting market forces shape the future transportation market and adapting to it, Uber has a grandiose vision they're trying to cram down the market's throat.

I don't think people really want the future Uber is trying to push. They should stop the self-driving car research, today. That future will happen anyway but it's not clear when cars will be able to transport passengers without a driver. Uber and Lyft are already treating human drivers like the machines they're working on to replace them. Neither will survive until robots are ready to take over unless they go back to basics. They'll need human drivers at least three years, probably closer to five. They can't survive that long burning through cash like they are today. The rider experience is already suffering from second rate drivers and high turnover.

Think about self checkouts at grocery stores when contemplating how long it will be before cars can drive themselves.

What are Uber's expenses?

[Cajun Hell]

What do they spend their money on?

The ride-sharing app, the database behind it, etc is a pretty decent project (I'm totally not dissing it, and I admire the idea too), but even one million dollars is a heaping mountain of money for that. Be super-pessimistic and call it ten million. But even then: what are the other millions spent on?

Obligatory naked capitalism link

[Master5000]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com... read about how Uber has no change on becoming profitable like ever in the 5 part series.