Uber’s executive Sachin Kansal has a reputation for dogfooding – the tactic of using one’s products and services to eliminate problems and improve.
As he climbed the Uber executive staircase for the last eight years, Kansal has made 700 trips to provide food or people to their destinations. Long -term references, often dozens of pages and full of screenshots of the application that documented its observations and what to correct have become a Kansal brand.
As the company’s new product leader, Kansal has a new challenge that can put its dog strategy in the test: Integrating autonomous vehicles into the Uber application, including Waymo Robotoxia into a high -profile launch that started this week at Austin.
“What does it mean to be integrated with the platform? Because these are easy words to say,” said Kansal, who was appointed to the role of CPO in October after the Sundeep Jain’s departure.
In practice, this means that a technological match dance at the rear end of the Uber app that is activated whenever a user requests delivery or food route. The autonomous vehicles add another layer of complexity. The Uber market – where the matching and pricing decisions are made – should weigh a variety of factors at one point and decide whether a person with a man or a robot car should be sent.
Robots in Uber app
Uber, after intending to develop autonomous vehicle technology at home, has become partnerships to chart the market share in the hatching industry. To date, Uber has been working with 14 autonomous technology companies worldwide.
The company worked with Alphabet’s 2023 autonomous subsidiary to offer a romance ride in Phoenix. He has also secured agreements with Avride, Cartken sidewalks, and serves robotics to deliver food to the Uber Eats network. Avride also plans to start its robot in the Uber app in Dallas later this year.
Kansal is in the driver’s place of what will look like these AV product experiences and how they will work in the Uber application. And his next big test is here.
Waymo and Uber started this week a Robota service in Austin, which marks a development in the two companies’ AV strategies. The so -called Robotaxi service “Waymo on Uber” is an exclusive partnership. The only way to greet a Waymo Robotaxi on Austin – and soon Atlanta – will be through the Uber app.
Robotaxi also separates responsibility, a divergence from the way Waymo has traditionally executed its activities.
Waymo will be responsible for the test of vehicles, road assistance and some aspects of rider support. Uber will manage fleet services, such as vehicle cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging and warehouse work through a company called Moove Cars, which is re -demolished in Avomo.
It is important that Uber will handle the matching, pricing and launching of robbery to their destinations. The balance between human drivers and robots could prove particularly polarizing. Teamsters, a workers’ union that represents the drivers, is a vocal opponent for robbery and self-guiding trucks. Drivers have also shared their concerns that robbery will reduce their pay or take their jobs completely.
Kansal, who helped develop the Uber for Teens service, is expecting to evolve and improve the AV program, as the company learns.
“We will learn a lot about the management and maintenance and charge of autonomous vehicles,” he said. “We will learn a lot as we create the fleet’s business with our partner.” He added that Uber will also pull out of her experience in managing human -driven car offering and apply it to robbery.
“I feel pretty sure that it is something that will be successful,” he said. “Of course, as we learn, we will coordinate it further. And what we learn and coordinate, not only will we apply it to Austin, we will apply it to other places.”
Kansal said he was sure of the “Waymo On Uber” service model and the use of a fleet operator, but said that other options may be displayed in the future.
“I am sure we will try different models, but we feel very comfortable with this model, given our experience with fleet providers,” he said.
Uber’s past AV
Uber had a controversial relationship with autonomous vehicle technology. The company, while led by the co-founder and former CEO of Travis Kalanick, saw AVS as a winner-all the race. And in Uber’s view, the only way to win was to create its own business unit.
Ride-Hailing started the pursuit of autonomous vehicles in early 2015, when it announced a strategic partnership with the National Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. The work on work on the development of car -free car technology has emerged Uber poaching dozens of nrec researchers and scientists. A year later, Uber acquired a launch of self-guiding trucks called Otto, a starting up by one of Google engineers, Anthony Levandowski, along with three other Google veterans: Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette.
This acquisition has led to legal problems with Google, which carried out two arbitration requirements against Levandowski and Ron. Waymo filed a separate lawsuit against Uber in February 2017 for the breach of theft and patents for the commercial secret. Waymo claimed in the suit, which went to trial, but ended in a settlement in 2018, that Levandowski stole commercial secrets, which were then used by Uber.
Uber shortly participated in another darker dispute when one of the autonomous test vehicles – which had a driver for human safety behind the steering wheel – hit and killed a pedestrian in March 2018.
Uber returned Uber Atg in spring 2019, after securing $ 1 billion funding from Toyota, Auto Maker Denso and Softbank’s Vision Fund. But it was still a costly business that employed more than 1,000 people and had at least 250 self-driving vehicles in its fleet. Eventually, Uber sold ATG to Aurora in a complex deal that included an exchange of shares and an investment of $ 400 million it gave Ride-Hailing 26% to the Combined Company.
While Uber’s strategy has changed from home technology building in collaboration with AV companies such as Waymo, the company has always been loyal to autonomy, Kansal said. Still, challenges and controversy will continue to inflate – truly faithful or not.
Kansal hopes that the implementation of the Dogfooding system to Robotia will bring quick and energetic changes that will smooth out any bumps in AV. And he is already in it, traveling to and from Austin to lead to Waymo Robotaxis.
It’s still a tall class. Today Uber is completing a million trips an hour, according to Kansal, who wants each one to be flawless.
