If you thought rocket science was hard, try training a computer to safely change lanes while behind the wheel of a full-size SUV in heavy drivetime traffic. Autonomous vehicle developers have faced myriad similar challenged over the past three decades but nothing, it seems, turns the wheels of innovation quite like a bit of good, old-fashioned competition -- one which DARPA was only more than happy to provide. In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car, Insider senior editor and former Wired Transportation editor, Alex Davies takes the reader on an immersive tour of DARPA's "Grand Challenges" -- the agency's autonomous vehicle trials which drew top talents from across academia and the private sector in effort to spur on the state of autonomous vehicle technology -- as well as profiles many of the elite engineers that took place in the competitions. In the excerpt below however Davies recalls how, back in 2014, then-CEO Travis Kalanick steered Uber into the murky waters of autonomous vehicle technology, setting off a flurry of acquihires, buyouts, furious R&D efforts, and one fatal accident -- only to end up selling off the division this past December. Excerpt from Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car by Alex Davies.

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.

In the late 1950s, a weapons maker called the Martin Company received a contract to build the first Pershing missile. It was to be the most sophisticated mobile weapons system on earth: 5 tons of metal and precision technology designed to deliver a nuclear warhead from up to 460 miles away. Should it ever be used, there would be no margin for error. It had to be perfect. And the US Army wanted it delivered quickly.

After nearly a year of hearings, discovery, motions, and legal maneuverings, Waymo v. Uber, a bitter battle over autonomous tech trade secrets, finally kicked off this week. And in its opening days, the case has lived up to its billing as the first great trial of this self-driving century. Good thing our own Aarian Marshall has volunteered to slog through days that start at 7:30 am and involve unyielding wooden benches to bring us all the haps: Uber ex-CEO Travis Kalanick's well hydrated testimony, deleted and embarrassing texts, the peskily hard-to-nail-down definition of "trade secret," and more. If you care at all about what's going on here, follow her on Twitter. Elsewhere in the car world, more fights: Tesla reported a record loss while Elon Musk races to ramp up Model 3 production; Ram Trucks caught flak for a questionable Super Bowl ad; Uber is trying to win back drivers; and someone slapped a self-driving Chevy Bolt. Let's get you caught up.

A high-profile legal fight is underway in a San Francisco courthouse between Uber and Google-spin-off Waymo, which accuses the ride-hailing company of stealing its self-driving car technology. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building on day three of the trial between Waymo and Uber Technologies on February 7, 2018 in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO -- After two days of legal wrangling, lawyers for Google's self-driving car company Waymo on Wednesday injected a little bit of Hollywood into the protracted corporate scuffle over whether Uber stole trade secrets in its rushed quest to bring self-driving cars to the masses. Michael Douglas' voice rolled through the courtroom: "Greed is right. The iconic video clip from the 1987 movie "Wall Street" attempted to convey a clear message to the jury: Uber is an aggressive, greedy company willing to do anything to win. That sentiment played on Uber's well-documented history of ruthless business exploits that sometimes ran afoul of regulators and business partners. But the anecdote didn't answer the fundamental question the case tries to resolve: whether those tactics extended to stealing eight trade secrets from Waymo as a short cut to developing key self-driving car sensors. That question, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup repeatedly has said, is the crux the case rests on -- and not Uber's oft-compromised reputation of fostering a frat-boy culture that discriminated against women and condoned secretive surveillance programs of rivals. The YouTube clip of cold-blooded financier Gordon Gekko was sent as a link in a 2016 message from then-Google self-driving car engineer Anthony Levandowski to Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO at the time. Levandowski had expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of progress at Google, and Kalanick was interested in hiring him to fire up Uber's fledgling autonomous car program, something that was seen as critical to Uber's business model. In the text, Levandowski sent Kalanick a link to the video along with the words, "Here's the speech you need to give," followed by two "wink" emoticons. On the witness stand, Kalanick brushed off the suggestion that the link was loaded was significance and sparred a bit with Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven, who asked Kalanick if he clicked on the link. "I think I would have," said Kalanick. I've seen the video before, and the movie."

Lawyers for self-driving car company Waymo play clip from Wall Street in court, as Travis Kalanick is accused of stealing rival's ideas Wed 7 Feb 2018 16.23 EST Last modified on Wed 7 Feb 2018 17.42 EST A scene from the 1987 movie Wall Street became a flashpoint in the trial in which Google's driverless car spinoff Waymo accuses the ride-hailing company Uber of stealing trade secrets. "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good," said the lead character, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, in a grainy YouTube video shown on Wednesday to a packed room in San Francisco's federal court. The former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick watched from the stand, shifting in his seat. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind."

On the stand in San Francisco today, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick appeared calm, cool, and well-hydrated, sipping from a series of tiny water bottles while serenely fielding questions from the legal team at Waymo, the Alphabet self-driving car effort that is suing Uber for trade secret theft. It was his first public speaking appearance since his resignation from the ridehailing company this summer, so his mere presence felt like big news. But as the second day of the Waymo-Uber trial drew to a close, a quieter moment, one that dealt with the tricky nature of trade secrets, might become more consequential. If the lawyers do their job right, the jury will decide this case based not on salacious emails or meeting notes (though Waymo has presented plenty of internal Uber communications that are, well, juvenile at best). It will decide based on whether the laser technology Uber used in its self-driving cars qualify as Waymo trade secrets.

Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car company, filed its trade secrets theft lawsuit against Uber almost one year ago. If the case had immediately gone to trial, it might have looked a bit different. By now, though, tales of Uber's broken culture have been splashed across front webpages, new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is a public contrition pro, and former CEO Travis Kalanick, the guy who allegedly drove the whole "win at all costs" ethos from the top, is, well, former. That makes Kalanick a very useful device for Waymo's legal team. On Monday, the first day of the blockbuster trial over autonomous vehicle lasers between Uber and Waymo, the Waymo lawyers made it clear: Kalanick will play the bad guy here.

Uber executives are travelling the globe to reassure regulators that the company is changing the way it does business. As Laura Frykberg reports, it follows a string of controversies that have hurt the ride-hailing firm's reputation. A group led by Japanese technology conglomerate Softbank has acquired a major stake in Uber. In a tender offer that expired Thursday, Dec. 28, SoftBank acquired a 15 percent stake in Uber while the remaining members got about 3 percent, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to publicly discuss details. (Photo: Eric Risberg, AP) SAN FRANCISCO -- There's a big trial starting Monday between two companies you've heard of -- Uber and Waymo, the autonomous car company owned by Google-parent Alphabet. But their brawl is over a topic you might not be familiar with: the technology inside a little spinning eyeball on the top of a self-driving car's roof.

Uber allegedly hacked into competitors computer systems and engaged in undercover surveillance. Travis Kalanick, onetime CEO of Uber, is poised to sell a big chuck of his stock in the ride hailing company. SAN FRANCISCO -- Ousted Uber CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick was always filthy rich on paper. Now he'll soon be swimming in greenbacks in reality. Kalanick plans to sell 29% of his Uber stock -- after long boasting that he had never relinquished one share of the ride-hailing company he helped start in 2009 -- to the cha-ching tune of $1.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday citing persons familiar with the matter.