SAN FRANCISCO – Uber was either a cheating competitor willing to break the law to win the race to develop self-driving cars, or the victim of an unproven conspiracy theory stitched together by its main rival, Waymo, jurors heard in opening statements of a trade secrets trial on Monday. The first salvos were delivered to a 10-person jury in San Francisco federal court in a civil lawsuit that could help determine who emerges in the forefront of the autonomous car business nearly a year after Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving car unit Waymo sued rival Uber Technologies Inc. The case hinges on whether Uber used apparent trade secrets to advance its autonomous vehicle program. Waymo's allegation is that its former engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files in December 2015 containing designs for autonomous vehicles before going to work for Uber and leading its self-driving car unit in 2016. "Waymo wants you to believe that Anthony Levandowski got together with Uber as part of some grand conspiracy to cheat and take trade secrets," Uber attorney Bill Carmody said in his opening statement to the jury.

Nvidia will partner with Uber and Volkswagen as the graphics chipmaker's artificial intelligence platforms make further gains in the autonomous vehicle industry. The company, which already has partnerships in the industry with companies such as carmaker Tesla and China's Baidu, makes computer graphics chips and has also been expanding into technology for self-driving cars. CEO Jensen Huang told an audience at the CES technology conference in Las Vegas that Uber's self-driving car fleet was using Nvidia technology to help its autonomous cars perceive the world and make split-second decisions. Uber has been using Nvidia's GPU computing technology since its first test fleet of Volvo SC90 SUVS were deployed in 2016 in Pittsburgh and Phoenix. Uber's autonomous driving programme has been shaken this year by a lawsuit filed in San Francisco by rival Waymo alleging trade secret theft.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) is teaming up with BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye to develop autonomous cars. The move brings a huge carmaker into Intel's camp in the race to make self-driving cars, which could spawn a giant economy in the coming decades. Intel acquired Mobileye for $15.3 billion to boost its competence in computer vision, and it will use that technology to help develop the autonomous car platform in cooperation with the carmakers. "The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customize," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, in a statement. "We're thrilled to welcome FCA's contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world's safest autonomous vehicles."

Fiat Chrysler will join an alliance led by BMW to develop self-driving cars, intensifying a race by carmakers and technology companies to develop'robotaxis' which can be called up via smartphone and paid for by the minute. The market for such self-driving cabs could be worth $2 trillion by 2030, according to consultants McKinsey, as younger customers abandon car ownership in favour of a pay-per-use mobility service. Fiat Chrysler (FCA) said it plans to put autonomous car technology into production by 2021, matching a timeframe shared by rival companies who are also developing self-driving cars. Fiat Chrysler will join an alliance led by BMW to develop self-driving cars, intensifying a race by carmakers and technology companies to develop'robotaxis' which can be called up via smartphone and paid for by the minute BMW and its partners Intel and Mobileye said FCA would bring engineering and other expertise to the deal, paving the way to creating an industry-wide autonomous car platform which other carmakers could adopt. Automakers are seeking alliances to share the high costs of developing autonomous cars, which according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan will make up about 10 to 15 percent of vehicles in Europe by 2030.

Lyft Inc has formed a self-driving car division, company executives said, a bold investment for the second-largest U.S. ride-services firm as it jockeys for position in the highly competitive autonomous vehicle race. The executives said on Thursday the company would soon open a facility in Palo Alto, California known as'Level 5' that would eventually be staffed by'several hundred' engineers. Lyft engineers will collaborate there with autonomous vehicle experts from other companies to build self-driving systems. Lyft Inc has formed a self-driving car division, company executives said, a bold investment for the second-largest U.S. ride-services firm as it jockeys for position in the highly competitive autonomous vehicle race Waymo and Lyft are joining forces against ridesharing giant Uber, which is racing to develop its own self-driving vehicles. 'Waymo holds today's best self-driving technology, and collaborating with them will accelerate our shared vision of improving lives with the world s best transportation,' the Lyft statement read.

The race is on to develop self-driving cars that are able to navigate busy roads safely. Now, Amazon has been awarded a patent for a road network that controls how autonomous vehicles could one day navigate a busy motorway. The patent hints at Amazon's ambitions to control fleets of vehicles and roads as well as its dream of'reversible lanes' to help ease congestion. Reversible lanes could essentially change the direction of a flow of traffic, with the traffic management system communicating with cars to allow them to travel safely in the direction they want without slowing other vehicles down. The patent, awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Alexandria, Virginia, reads: 'A roadway management system can generate lane configurations for a roadway or a portion of the roadway.

German car maker BMW has announced that it is joining forces with US computer chip giant Intel and the Israeli technology firm Mobileye to develop self-driving cars. The three companies'are collaborating to bring solutions for highly and fully automated driving into series production by 2021,' they said in a joint statement. The news comes amid growing interest in self-driving cars following tests over the past few years by Google and research by several major automakers. The future of BMW could see driverless cars rolled out by 2021 in an effort to make travel'safer and easier'. Pictured is the German car firm's i3 electric car Germany's premium auto makers are at the centre of thecountry's global reputation for meticulous engineering. But with the expected shift in focus from a car's body toits brains, the risk is that the expertise will accumulate insilicon valley or in China, rather than Germany's carmakingregions of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemburg.