Driverless Startup Zoox Suddenly Removes CEO

Last month, Bloomberg shed some light on a secretive Australian startup called Zoox that is working on an autonomous vehicle unlike any other. It can reportedly make noises to communicate with pedestrians and drive bidirectionally, meaning it can cruise into a parking spot one way and cruise out the other. Today, it is being reported that their CEO Tim Kentley-Klay is being dismissed from the company after closing a massive financing round in July to the tune of $500 million. From the report: Kentley-Klay tweeted on Wednesday that the firing came "without a warning, cause or right of reply." "Today was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks," he wrote. Jesse Levinson, the company's other co-founder and current chief technology officer, will be promoted to president, said a person familiar with the decision who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The person declined to offer an explanation for the move. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk and a Zoox board member, was named executive chairman for the company.

In an emotional missive on Twitter, Kentley-Klay criticized the board for their decision. "Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win, the board chose the path of fear," he wrote, charging that the directors were "optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress." Before starting Zoox, Kentley-Klay was offered a job with Google's self-driving project, now called Waymo. He turned it down, and has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking. The Zoox board, which includes Levinson, voted to oust Kentley-Klay, said the person familiar with the situation.

Comments

Weird strategy

[JaredOfEuropa]

[Kentley-Klay] has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking

Why is that wiser? The problem with today's autonomous cars isn't getting the (retrofitted) car to do what it needs to do, it is figuring out what it needs to do based on available data from its sensors. That problem doesn't really change if you build a vehicle with autonomy in mind; it'll have to navigate the same roads as retrofitted cars and deal with the same conditions.

Re:Weird strategy

[Anonymous Coward]

It's wiser because it raises more VC money. You need to say "oh, we're doing something in way X which is different from Google and that's how we plan on competing successfully against them".

I know why I'd remove the guy.

[OwP_Fabricated]

"Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win"

Anyone who uses a phrase like this unironically probably isn't someone I'd want as CEO.

"without a warning, cause or right of reply."

[drinkypoo]

So is this an internal coup, or did the board just find out about something this guy has done which will cause problems for the company? Either way, there's no meat with these potatoes. Show me this meal again when it's complete.

As far as bidirectional vehicles go, they only make sense for delivery vehicles. They make zero sense for passenger vehicles, because passengers want to face forward. For deliveries, though, there are a handful of compelling reasons to use them, which I've posted about before. The primary reason is to deal with tight driveways. They don't make sense unless your sensors are very cheap, though, since you need twice as many of them. If Velodyne comes through on their promise of $50 LIDAR then maybe it's feasible.