BERLIN--Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Oliver Blume has put plans for a self-driving vehicle under review in the first sign since his appointment two months ago that he is walking back some of his predecessor's most ambitious technology ventures. Mr. Blume is likely to delay the Trinty self-driving electric car project and could cancel plans to build a new factory for the vehicle near its headquarters, people familiar with the matter said. In a message Thursday that was seen by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Blume and VW brand CEO Thomas Schäfer told employees, "We are using this opportunity to review all projects and investments and determine whether they are viable." The move shows how Mr. Blume, who took the helm in September after the board ousted Herbert Diess, is beginning to reorder VW's most ambitious--and fraught--endeavors to focus on near-term implementation of key software and technology for coming models. A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.

Uber has hired a former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) official to join its autonomous vehicle team, Reuters reports. Nat Beuse will be joining the company after serving as the NHTSA's associate administrator of vehicle safety research, and he's doing so at a critical time when Uber is working to mend its safety image following a fatal crash involving one of its self-driving cars. "Uber's approach to self-driving vehicles is an opportunity to make a difference in the safe commercialization of this revolutionary technology, which I've spent a considerable amount of time working with in recent years," Beuse said in a statement. "It's clear to me that the team here is dedicated to prioritizing safety." In March, an autonomous Uber SUV, with a safety driver behind the wheel, struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, causing Uber to suspend all of its self-driving tests across the country.

Apply, which has been famously tight-lipped on its self-driving vehicle research, has posted what looks like its first public research on the subject, notes Reuters. The paper is listed on the public site Arxiv, often used by researchers to get preliminary feedback before publishing in a final form. The report describes a new way to use LiDAR called VoxelNet. That would make it easier for autonomous cars to not just spot the location of objects, but determine critical information like whether they're pedestrians or cyclists. While the scientific part of the paper is interesting, the most surprising part about it is that it exists at all.

Japan's taxi industry, faced with a labor crunch due to an aging population, has been looking at new technologies to drive growth. The sector may also have to deal with more competition in the future if the government allows ride-sharing services such as Uber to operate across the country.

Amazon is working on self-driving cars, according to a new patent that deals with the complex task of navigating reversible lanes. The patent, filed in November 2015 and granted on Tuesday, covers the problem of how to deal with reversible lanes, which change direction depending on the bulk of the traffic flow. This type of lane is typically used to manage commuter traffic into and out of cities, particularly in the US. Autonomous vehicles, the patent warns, "may not have information about reversible lanes when approaching a portion of a roadway that has reversible lane", leading to a worst-case scenario of them driving headfirst into oncoming traffic. More generally, the inability to plan for reversible lanes means cars and trucks can't optimise their routes by getting into the correct lane well in advance, something that could otherwise prove to be one of the benefits of self-driving cars.

Crucially, Apple also believes that incumbent automakers might have an unfair edge. It wants newcomers to have the "same opportunity" to test self-driving vehicles that more "established" companies do, without having to chase after regulatory exemptions like it would today. In a statement to the Financial Times, Apple confirmed the letter's core message: the firm wrote to the NHTSA because it's "investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems," and it wants to help shape the "best practices" for self-driving cars. It's not confirming what it's making, however, including reports that it scaled back its automotive plans to focus on an underlying tech platform instead of building vehicles. There's no longer any doubt that Apple is interested in driverless cars, but there's also no guarantee that its technology will reach production cars in the first place, let alone that you'll see something Apple-branded on the road.

Apple's hopes of developing self-driving car technology have been a poorly kept secret for a while, and now it's coming clean. The company has sent a letter to the US' National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acknowledging that the company is "excited" about automation in numerous fields, "including transportation." It wants to test self-driving car tech, and it's hoping to address both ethical and regulatory issues. It believes the industry should share crash (and near-crash) data to improve safety, for example, but this "should not come at the cost of privacy." Crucially, Apple also believes that incumbent automakers might have an unfair edge.