There were still a ways off, he acknowledged--five or 10 or 15 years. But to him, Uber's role was clear. "Are we going to be part of the future?" he said. "Or are we going to resist the future, like that taxi industry before us? For us, we're a tech company, so we've said, let's be part of that."

Uber Technologies Inc. wants to expand its zero emissions pledge to food-delivery and make the business environmentally sustainable, but Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi stopped short of committing to do so by a 2030 deadline for its ride-hailing arm. The CEO said in an interview that food deliveries Uber makes in Europe are typically carried on scooters and bikes, so it prioritized cars for its green ambitions. "We wanted to start with our mainline mobility business, and then based on our learnings there, we will absolutely apply them to delivery as well," Khosrowshahi said. "I don't know if it'll be included in the 2030 target, but we're absolutely going to look to drive delivery to be fully green as well." Ahead of two weeks of climate talks between world leaders -- known as COP26 -- several transportation-focused technology firms called for sped-up sustainability targets and expanded urban mobility options.

Uber has sold its loss-making flying taxi division, Elevate, to a Californian startup as it abandons costly side projects in an attempt to turn a profit next year. The sale to Joby Aviation, announced late on Tuesday, comes a day after Uber ditched ambitions to develop its own self-driving car and sold its autonomous vehicle division, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), to the startup Aurora Innovation for $4bn (£3bn). Uber and Joby described the Elevate sale as an "expanded partnership". It will result in Uber investing an additional $75m (£56m) in Joby. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's chief executive, said: "Advanced air mobility has the potential to be exponentially positive for the environment and future generations. This deal allows us to deepen our partnership with Joby, the clear leader in this field, to accelerate the path to market for these technologies."

Uber has ditched efforts to develop its own self-driving car with the multibillion-dollar sale of its driverless car division to a Silicon Valley startup. The ride-hailing company is selling the business, known as Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), for a reported $4bn (£3bn) to Aurora, a start-up that makes sensors and software for autonomous vehicles and is backed by Amazon and Sequoia Capital. As part of the deal, Uber is investing $400m in the venture, which employs 1,200 people, in return for a minority stake of 26%, and its chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi will join Aurora's board. The deal will also give Aurora access to a carmaker, Japan's Toyota, which has invested in ATG. Uber said it would collaborate with Aurora in bringing driverless cars to its network in the coming years.

Uber Technologies Inc. was once a poster child for Silicon Valley's unchecked ambition. As recently as this year, the company was promising to usher in a self-driving revolution and popularize flying cars. But Uber now says it is slashing 3,000 jobs, sidelining extraneous projects and shuttering dozens of offices after the spread of the coronavirus slammed its ride-hailing business. The latest round of job cuts at the company brings the total since the start of the pandemic to 6,700, including thousands of layoffs earlier this month in customer support and human resources. The staff reductions now represent about a quarter of Uber's workforce.

Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote for The Washington Post and was a resident of Virginia, was brutally murdered in October 2018 after he entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The C.I.A. has concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the journalist's killing. As Axios journalists noted in their interview with Mr. Khosrowshahi, Saudi Arabia is Uber's fifth-largest shareholder, and Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and the recently named chairman of the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco, sits on Uber's board. In the interview, Mr. Khosrowshahi compared the death of Mr. Khashoggi to the death of a woman who was struck by one of Uber's autonomous vehicles last year. Karen Attiah, an opinions editor for The Washington Post who worked with Mr. Khashoggi, said in a series of tweets on Monday that Mr. Khosrowshahi was "running cover for the Saudi government" and comparing the murder to a technology glitch.

NEW YORK – Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is being criticized for calling the murder of a Washington Post columnist "a mistake" and comparing it to the death of a pedestrian struck by one of the company's autonomous vehicles. Khosrowshahi later said he regretted his comments, made during an interview with Axios on HBO. He tweeted Monday that there's no forgiving or forgetting what happened to the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and he was wrong to call it a mistake. Critics say Khosrowshahi is downplaying Khashoggi's grisly murder to placate one of the company's biggest investors. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, known as The Public Investment Fund, holds about $1.9 billion worth of Uber stock, making it the company's fifth-largest stakeholder.

Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, has attempted to limit the damage after calling the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi "a mistake" similar to a fatal accident that occurred during tests of his company's self-driving car. Khashoggi, a Saudi national resident in the US, and a severe critic of the Saudi regime who wrote for the Washington Post, was murdered in Istanbul last year after visiting the Saudi Arabian consulate there. His body was dismembered and disposed of. His death has been described by Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, as a "deliberate, premeditated execution" that warrants further investigation into the responsibility of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The prince is a key US ally close to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and chief adviser.

The ride-hailing service wants to ferry the world around in self-driving cars and on electric scooters, deliver our takeouts and groceries by drone, and ship freight via robot trucks. But first Uber needs to answer a big question: will it ever make any money? This week, Wall Street will have the chance to ask that question. Uber went public in May in one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in years. To say it stalled would be an understatement.

Uber has unveiled the terms of a hotly anticipated stock market float which it hopes will value the ride-hailing service at more than $91bn (£70bn). While the target is $10bn less than some bankers suggested the 10-year-old firm might be worth, the valuation is more than double the value of the 116-year-old carmaker Ford and would be the largest float by a US tech company since Facebook's in 2012. Its Wall Street debut will gauge investors' excitement about the prospects of a company that has expanded rapidly from taxi services into food delivery and is now investing billions in developing driverless cars. If it hits the mark, Uber will raise around $9bn in new funds and some early investors will make big profits. Despite the scale of ts ambition, Uber lost $1.8bn last year even while its revenues surged by more than 40% to $11.3bn.