Uber is giving up on self-driving cars in California after deadly crash

All of Uber’s self-driving cars were shut down after a woman was killed by one of them in Tempe, Arizona last week. Now, the company is letting its permit to test its tech in California expire.

“In addition to this decision to suspend testing throughout the country, Uber has indicated that it will not renew its current permit to test autonomous vehicles in California,” Brian Soublet, the deputy director of the Department of Motor Vehicles in California, wrote in a letter, obtained by VICE News, and sent to Austin Heyworth, Uber’s public affairs manager.

“Prior to resuming autonomous vehicle testing operations in California, Uber must apply for a new autonomous vehicle testing permit. Any applications for a new permit will need to address any follow-up analysis or investigations from the recent crash in Arizona and may also require a meeting with the department,” Soublet continued.

The state of California requires any company that wants to test self-driving cars on its roads first apply for a permit to do so. Those companies are then required to submit reports on “interventions,” or when the human driver has to take over from the self-driving robot.

Uber hasn’t submitted those reports, the New York Times reports, as it hadn’t been testing on California’s roads for long enough for it to be required. But its cars were already struggling compared with some of its competitors: While Google’s Waymo cars have required the human driver to intervene once every 5,600 miles, Uber’s cars were barely cracking 13 miles per intervention.

The future of self-driving tech at Uber has been a topic of speculation since former CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down in June of 2017. Though Kalanick was singularly focused on getting Uber self-driving tech to market, his successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, has reportedly been weighing whether company’s investment into self-driving cars is worth it, according to Bloomberg.

Cover image: Photo taken on March 7, 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows a self-driving vehicle's analysis of its surroundings during a test drive conducted by Uber Technologies Inc. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo (Photo by Kyodo News via Getty Images)