Toyota and Uber have announced that they are extending their collaboration agreement in the autonomous auto realm. The deal will see Toyota invest $500 million into Uber. Uber plans to integrate its self-driving tech alongside the Toyota Guardian technology in vehicles built specifically for the Uber ride-sharing network. Toyota and Uber want to bring autonomous ride-sharing to the masses at scale.
Uber is tapping AI to help determine whether a customer is taking a trip for business or pleasure. This will be a convenience feature for riders who use Uber for both their working and recreational life, helping avoid mistakes that result in business trips being charged to personal credit cards, for example. The feature relies on machine learning.
Uber Elevate has teamed up with UT Austin and US Army Research Labs as part of its uberAIR project, which envisions an urban-based ride-share aviation network. Uber Elevate intends to launch in three cities with demonstrations starting in 2020; both Los Angeles and Dallas are two of those launch cities and a third one is being sought internationally. If everything goes as planned, uberAIR will start commercial operations in 2023.
Uber has spent a couple years working on "the future of trucking," a project involving autonomous long-haul trucks intended for commercial transportation. Despite the work already put into the plan, Uber has decided to change its business focus, shuttering the autonomous truck project in the process. Engineers from the trucking unit will be moved over to the self-driving cars project.
Earlier this year, Uber took its self-driving cars off the road after an accident resulted in the death of a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. At the time, Uber promised significant changes to the autonomous hardware and software in those cars and announced plans to put them back on the road at some point during the summer. Today, Uber revealed that its self-driving cars will soon return to Pittsburgh, but when they hit the road again, they'll be under close watch by the company's mission specialists.
Uber has introduced new tools in North America that will improve the rider and driver experiences by helping the two find each other, meet at the best time possible, and more. Chief among the new features is something Uber calls "Spotlight," a simple in-app tool that transforms the rider's phone into a colorful torch to help their driver find them in the crowd.
Uber is continuously monitoring drivers for criminal charges, a new report claims. These are referred to as ongoing background checks and they're intended to help improve rider safety, a big criticism that has plagued the company since the beginning. The monitoring is reportedly being done in conjunction with companies Appriss and Checkr.
Following a fatal accident earlier this year that involved one of its autonomous vehicles, Uber has laid off about 100 employees who were involved with its self-driving effort. The information comes form Pennsylvania news agencies, which report that most of the impacted individuals were located in Pittsburgh. Uber had started autonomous car tests in the city back in 2016.
Uber has invested in electric scooter company Lime Bikes, becoming a "strategic partner" for the company. Lime announced the new business investment today, revealing that Uber will soon enable its users to utilize Lime's scooters through the ridesharing company's app. Lime says it is currently working on co-branding its scooters, indicating they'll soon also show the Uber logo.
The safety driver in Uber's autonomous car that killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona earlier this year was watching Hulu on her phone right up to the crash, local police claim. The incident - which grounded Uber's self-driving car fleet as the company began an investigation into the safety of its vehicles - was "entirely avoidable" law enforcement have suggested.
Some Uber users are seeing a new in-app feature that gives them the choice to save money by waiting longer for a ride. A screenshot of the feature has appeared online; in it, we see an advisory stating that "if you're OK leaving later, we'll request your ride" at the later, cheaper time slot. Users are presented with both the current and delayed costs.
![Google Maps just evicted Uber bookings [Updated]](https://c.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/uber-google-maps-980x620.jpg)
Google Maps users can no longer use the app to book a ride with Uber, with the option quietly disappearing from both the Android and iOS versions of the mapping app. The change means that, in the US at least, only Lyft is integrated as a route option when using Google Maps for directions.