For the first time, public Uber UBER riders can now hail an autonomous ride, starting today in Las Vegas.
Uber has talked about autonomous vehicles as the key to its growth, first with founder Travis Kalanick and later with current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The partnership between Uber and the autonomous vehicle company Motional is the result of the announcement, which was first announced by the two companies in October.
In a statement, Noah Zych, Uber Global Head of Autonomous Mobility and Delivery, said Motional has proven itself to be an industry leader, steadily and safely progressing autonomous technology towards a driverless future. We look forward to integrating autonomous technologies into the Uber network to grow our business by providing customers with more reliable, affordable and effortless transportation and delivery options, as well as to take this next step together in Las Vegas. Here's how it works in Uber app. Customers can choose UberX or Uber Comfort Electric for the chance to be matched with a robotaxi. The partnership between Uber and Hyundai-backed Motional covers both ride-hailing and delivery, and the two companies had been working together even before the October announcement. In May, Motional and Uber collaborated to offer autonomous deliveries in Santa Monica, Calif.
Motional, which has more than 1,500 employees worldwide, recently laid off some of its corporate workforce. The number of employees who have been affected hasn't been confirmed.
Since 2015, Uber has been involved with self-driving cars, though it hasn't been a straight line upward. In 2018, one of the company's driverless cars, which had an emergency backup driver in place, struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in what was believed to be the first death linked to self-driving vehicles. In 2020, Uber sold its self-driving business unit to Amazon AMZN and Sequoia-backed Aurora in a deal valued at $10 billion.
Uber shares are down 35% year-to-date. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down about 30% year-to-date.
Allie Garfinkle is a senior tech reporter at Yahoo Finance.