Self-driving cars are the top priority for Lyft, the company's director of product has revealed. Taggart Matthiesen, who runs autonomous efforts at the rideshare firm, called it'one of the key pillars' the organization is working on, and said its'basically the brand.' He also said the company will always employ human drivers in some way, but while Lyft hasn't figured out in what capacity, it appears it would be for special services and not typical Lyft rides. Self-driving cars are the top priority for Lyft, the company's director of product revealed. Taggart Matthiesen, who runs autonomous efforts at the rideshare firm, called it'one of the key pillars' the organization is working on said its'basically the brand' Lyft's director of product, Taggart Matthiesen, said self-driving cars are the company's top priority.

Even though Uber's self-driving efforts in the United States might have hit a massive snag, the ride-hailing giant is still planning to put a foot forward with its ongoing plans. It has now decided to set up another Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) office, but this one is being set up outside the country. As announced today, a new R&D center is coming up in Toronto and will be spearheaded by local AI researcher Raquel Urtasun. The said ATG office won't be focusing on the development of cameras, sensors or outfitting the vehicles themselves. Instead, the team led by Urtasun will be working on the software aspects of the system i.e artificial intelligence and machine learning. This means the said research won't exactly muddle with the existing hardware developed at the U.S ATG office.

An Uber spokesperson tells us the company is "continuing to look into this incident," and it's not too hard to see why. While it's already established that Uber isn't at fault (another driver failed to yield when Uber's SUV had the right of way), there are a number of unanswered questions. Is there any way the Uber ride's human driver could have avoided a collision by taking over in time, for example? And is there a software tweak that could have had the vehicle react on its own? Although it's tempting to pin the accident solely on the imperfect nature of people, Uber likely wants to rule out any factors that could be resolved through code or driver training.

The race to build the first fleet of robot cars is heating up, but today it's brainiac lawyers--not brainiac engineers--toiling in the pit. On Friday in a San Francisco district court, attorneys for Google self-driving car spinoff Waymo filed for a preliminary injunction against Uber. The Googlers' message: You stole our tech, and now we will eat your face. Waymo initially filed its bombshell complaint against Uber last month, alleging that former Googler Anthony Levandowski made off with 14,000 confidential documents and trade secrets before founding his own company, Otto--a startup that Uber acquired for a reported $680 million just six months later. And now the design for Uber's lidar, a crucial sensor that helps self-driving cars "see" around them, looks a lot like Waymo's, the suit alleges.

Until today, the race to build a self-driving car seemed to hinge on who had the best technology. Now it's become a case of full-blown corporate intrigue. Alphabet's self-driving startup, Waymo, is suing Uber, accusing the ridesharing giant of stealing critical autonomous driving technology. If the suit goes to trial, Apple's legal battle with Samsung could wind up looking tame by comparison. Waymo alleges that Anthony Levandovski, a former Google employee now at Uber, secretly downloaded 14,000 files from its hardware systems, resigned a month later, and then used the information to launch a self-driving truck startup called Otto.