As Uber Flails, Its Self-Driving Car Research Rolls On

For all its heat, the fire that is Uber in 2017 hasn't scorched everything. While the nigh-apocalyptic past six months have felled founder and CEO Travis Kalanick, and sparked questions about its ability to keep its employees safe, let alone happy, Uber's self-driving car program seems to be doing just fine. It's a rare but vital bit of good news for Uber, for which autonomy is an existential question. If another company figures out how to operate a taxi service without paying drivers and Uber cannot, it's lights out, unicorn. "What would happen if we weren't a part of that future? Kalanick told Business Insider last year. "Then the future passes us by." Now, Uber's self-driving program hasn't been unscathed. It faces a vicious lawsuit from Waymo, Google's self-driving car spinoff, which accuses it of using stolen IP to advance its autonomy research. Last month, Uber fired Anthony Levandowski, its self-driving car lead who allegedly brought that IP over from Google.