Uber extends an olive branch to Waymo as it settles trade secret lawsuit

By Ronan Glon Published February 9, 2018

One of the greatest tech lawsuits of the 21st century has come to a close. Ridesharing giant Uber recently reached a settlement deal with Waymo, Google’s sister company in charge of developing autonomous technology for cars. Waymo sued Uber a year ago to prove its rival stole intellectual property through one of its employees, Anthony Levandowski.

CNBC reports Uber agreed to pay Waymo a 0.34-percent equity stake. Investors value Uber at about $72 billion, meaning Waymo will receive approximately $245 million. The decision ends a year-old legal conflict that could have lasted for many more months.

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Uber proposed the settlement to end the costly and time-consuming lawsuit and avoid a potentially embarrassing jury verdict. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stressed it’s not an admission of wrongdoing, though he regrets how his predecessors (namely founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick) handled the lawsuit.

“We agree that Uber’s acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently,” he wrote, addressing Alphabet and referring to the company Levandowski founded. “We do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo’s proprietary information in its self-driving technology.”

The lawsuit focused on 14,000 digital files Levandowski allegedly downloaded before leaving his position at Google in January 2016. He founded Otto the following May and sold the company to Uber in August. Waymo’s lawyers argued it was a clever cover-up to poach Levandowski; Uber planned on buying Otto — along with Waymo’s allegedly stolen files — before the firm even existed.

“While I cannot erase the past, I can commit, on behalf of every Uber employee, that we will learn from it,” Khosrowshahi concluded.

With the lawsuit behind it, Uber will continue to work on developing and deploying its self-driving technology. Its reputation has taken a hit but it remains one of the leaders in the field. The ride-sharing firm operates pilot programs in Pennsylvania and in Arizona, and its fleet of over 200 self-driving prototypes has racked up more than two million miles on public roads. Last year, Uber pledged to purchase “tens of thousands” of Volvo SUVs between 2019 and 2021 and convert them into autonomous cars.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…

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Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

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Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs

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Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027

Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
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For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
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