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?

[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?

[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]

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?

[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

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

[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.

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.

Old Men Yell at Cloud

[0100010001010011]

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

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.

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.

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.

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.