zzdcar
Home
/
Reviews
/
Tech
/
Google's Autonomous Tech Lawsuit Looks Really Bad For Uber
Google's Autonomous Tech Lawsuit Looks Really Bad For Uber-September 2024
2024-02-19 EST 22:10:40

year hasn’t gone well. But it could get much worse, if it ends up on the losing side of a case filed by Google’s self-driving car project, Waymo. And the case, which alleges Uber’s autonomous driving system designs were created as the result of brazen theft by a former Waymo employee, doesn’t look good for Uber. At all.

Uber’s been roiled by one controversy after another—from , to video evidence of its , to the alleged use of a tool in the ride-hailing company’s app —but it’s the lawsuit filed last month by Waymo that’s currently front-and-center.

The suit, in essence, asserts that Uber’s future is grounded by self-driving system designs that were stolen by Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo employee who abruptly left the company in January 2016 to start an autonomous truck driving firm, Otto, which was later purchased by Uber for nearly $700 million. According to the complaint, between November 2015 and January 2016, before leaving Waymo, Levandowski downloaded nearly 10 GB of design files—about 14,000 in all— and left the company.

Uber may have a defense to mount in court, thanks to the quiet purchase of a small autonomous tech firm in 2016 by Otto. But a more complete timeline of Levandowski’s involvement with Uber has emerged in recent weeks—and it doesn’t look particularly good for the ride-hailing start-up.

Here’s a small, but interesting twist in the legal battle between Uber and Waymo, which alleges the

The most recent report comes from , which goes into exceptional detail behind the case and is well worth a read. But there’s a few documents that appear to significantly bolster Waymo’s case, stemming from new documents entered by the Google self-driving project in court.

In particular, the written testimony of Pierre-Yves Droz, the co-founder of 510 systems (a smaller tech-firm founded also by Levandowski), stands out. Here’s Droz:

Mr. Levandowski personally told me in January 2016 he was interested in implementing long-range LiDAR at his new company and was thus interested in the [REDACTED] design which is not available in any commercially available LiDAR system that I know of. I distinctly remember taking a walk around our Mountain View office one-on-one with Mr. Levandowski on or around January 5, 2016. During this walk, he told me specifically that he wanted his new company to have a long-range LiDAR, which is very useful for self-driving truck applications he was interested in. He also told me that he planned to “replicate” this Waymo technology at his new company.

Levandowski resigned from Waymo on January 27, 2016.

More from Droz:

This conversation did not surprise me. Mr. Levandowski had previously told me, in or around the summer of 2015, that he had talked with Brian McClendon, an Uber executive involved with their self-driving car project. We were having a dinner at a restaurant near the office, and he told me that it would be nice to create a new self-driving car startup and that Uber would be interested in buying the team responsible for the LiDAR we were developing at Google.

Recode that Levandowski apparently started working for Uber much sooner than anyone previously knew.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, according to Recode, hired Levandowski as a consultant to Uber’s self-driving car project just weeks after he left Waymo to start Otto, which officially formed Feb. 1, 2016. Levandowski was spotted at Uber’s Pittsburgh office that same month, Recode says.

To put it lightly, that’s strikingly weird. In what’s supposedly a billion-dollar race to constructing efficient, safe self-driving vehicles, Levandowski was actively working for someone who was supposed to be a competitor? Why? Uber didn’t officially purchase Otto until August 2016.

Every automaker and car start-up is currently working on the same technology, and now two tech…

A more detailed timeline of the situation has been compiled . But overall, the case has the potential to derail Uber’s self-driving endeavor, and soon, if a federal judge overseeing the case agrees that Waymo’s suit warrants issuing a preliminary injunction.

Uber to respond to Waymo’s request for the injunction, which would prevent the company from using the allegedly stolen self-driving tech while the case proceeds.

Comments
Welcome to zzdcar comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Tech
Volkswagen EVs Can Now Power Your House For Two Days (Update)
Volkswagen EVs Can Now Power Your House For Two Days (Update)
Experts have said that one of the ways to speed up EV adoption is for them to support . The ability for owners to power their house off their car or from the grid is vital. Just nine EVs on the market currently support bidirectional charging, but now VW...
Sep 10, 2025
Truck Fans Would Rather Wait For A Toyota Tacoma EV Than Buy A F-150 Lightning Or Cybertruck
Truck Fans Would Rather Wait For A Toyota Tacoma EV Than Buy A F-150 Lightning Or Cybertruck
fans are already cooling on despite more options on the market and news of upcoming models from the likes of Chevy and Ram. The and have yet to be released, while the has recently joined the and for sale in the U.S. And, yet, all of these current and...
Sep 10, 2025
Danish Investors Dump Tesla Shares After Elon Musk Calls Strikes In Sweden 'Insane'
Danish Investors Dump Tesla Shares After Elon Musk Calls Strikes In Sweden 'Insane'
Danish pension fund PensionDanmark is dumping all of its stock and putting the U.S. EV maker on its exclusion list of the companies it chooses to invest in – or not. The fund is selling all of its shares due to Elon Musk’s refusal to enter into labor agreements...
Sep 10, 2025
Biden’s First EV Charging Station Goes Online After $7.5 Billion In American EV Investments
Biden’s First EV Charging Station Goes Online After $7.5 Billion In American EV Investments
Despite in investments for the development of in the , not a single charging station had gone live thanks to — until now. The first EV charger paid for by Biden’s Bipartisan deal has come online in Ohio, according to , which marks the operational start of what the...
Sep 10, 2025
Costco Will Sell The Chevy Blazer EV At A Discount To Go With Your Rotisserie Chicken
Costco Will Sell The Chevy Blazer EV At A Discount To Go With Your Rotisserie Chicken
knows that you keep coming back for the and Kirkland brand, but you can now also buy a cheaper at your local warehouse. Chevy notified its dealers that members are eligible for a $1,000 rebate on the through January 2, according to . The discount is part of ,...
Sep 10, 2025
GM Says It's Dropping Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Because They're Unsafe (Update)
GM Says It's Dropping Apple CarPlay And Android Auto Because They're Unsafe (Update)
GM is still dealing with the fallout of its decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of developing its own in-house system. In the last eight months, the company has had to deal with while still maintaining its in-house system will be “.” Since neither of...
Sep 10, 2025
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.zzdcar.com All Rights Reserved