Waymo attacks Uber's self-driving truck 'cover-up'
Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car subsidiary, has accused Uber of creating a bogus self-driving truck unit to "cover up" the theft of trade secrets. The allegation was made in the US District Court in San Francisco, where Waymo is suing Uber for allegedly stealing its self-driving technology. The case centres around former Waymo employee, Anthony Levandowski, who it says stole 14,000 technical files from the company before leaving to set up his own self-driving truck unit, Otto. Uber then acquired Otto a few months later. Federal records now show that Uber's self-driving trucks are covering fewer miles than ever before. 
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick unveiled the company’s first Uber Freight vehicle yesterday in Pittsburgh. In a tweet, he showed off the first step in his company’s plan to connect shippers with truckers, extending its ride-sharing model to cargo. On the surface this news seems to boost Uber’s ambitions to take over, and eventually automate, not just human transport but also freight and logistics. After all, who could forget the tiny, less-than-a-year-old self-driving truck startup it acquired for an extraordinary $680 million last summer, which is now at the center of its legal imbroglio with Google?

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But an investigation into the events that followed the acquisition of that startup, Otto, suggests that Uber’s work on self-driving trucks is in fact flagging. At a hearing in the US District Court in San Francisco last Wednesday, Waymo accused former employee Anthony Levandowski and Uber of using Otto as a shell to conceal his swift move to the ride-sharing company. “Uber and Levandowski created a cover-up scheme for what they were doing,” Waymo’s lawyer told the court. “They concocted a story for public consumption.” In other words, Uber wasn’t particularly interested in trucking — it was far more invested in the procurement of its personnel.

If Waymo is right, the level of theatrics is epic. Otto launched in May of last year with a slick film of an autonomous truck rolling down a Nevada highway with no one behind the wheel. “We’re going to continue our testing with urgency,” cofounder Lior Ron told Backchannel at the time.

Uber acquired Otto a few short months later, and through the fall of 2016 the ride-hailing company kept on developing its autonomous trucks. But a spate of recent evidence suggests that even if Waymo’s accusation is wrong, Uber’s commitment to automated trucking was shallow, and today its self-driving semis are nowhere to be seen. (The truck featured in the photo Kalanick tweeted last night shows no evidence of self-driving gear.)

Federal records show that Otto’s 18-wheelers are covering fewer miles than ever before. Key engineers have been reassigned to its self-driving car program. And ambitious plans for pilot projects across the nation have been delayed or cancelled. Perhaps most telling, emails obtained under public records legislation suggest that one month before Otto emerged from stealth, Levandowski was already envisaging its future as an autonomous urban taxi service.

So even as Kalanick boasts about his company’s latest venture into trucking, a parallel, conflicting story is now emerging around the company’s ambitions for autonomous freight. Otto, the gem in Uber’s portfolio of acquisitions, was drifting away from robo-trucking before the world even knew its name.