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Nearly two years after a car from Uber’s autonomous fleet was involved in a deadly crash in the neighboring US state of Arizona, the Department of Motor Vehicles has granted a permit to the ride-hailing company to test its self-driving cars on public roads.
Before the horrendous incident in Arizona, the multinational ride hailing giant was developing an autonomous program to be the next step in its business plan. It had been testing autonomous technology in 3 cities across the US including Phoenix, San Francisco and Pittsburg along with Toronto in Canada. However, after the infamous crash, which took place in Phoenix, Arizona, Uber drastically scaled back it’s self-driving car project in the face of public and government concern. Now, being granted a permit by California, which has also granted similar permits to 65 other firms, is a huge step in Uber’s resurrection of the project.
Uber plans on resuming the program from its home base of San Francisco but didn’t provide an exact timeline of when testing would begin again.
“We do not have an update as to exactly when we’ll resume autonomous testing,” the company said in a statement.
Since going public in May 2019, the company has lost $7.4 billion. The company is claiming that its self-driving program “underwent an overhaul” since the crash happened in 2017. The company is pinning its future on autonomous vehicles and hopes that they will help the company climb its way out of its current financial woes.
