Uber executive Sachin Kansal has a reputation for DogFooding. This is a tactic to use your products and services to eradicate and improve problems.
When climbing Uber’s Executive Ladder over the past eight years, Kansal ratcheted 700 trips to bring food and people to their destinations. Long reports, often dozens of pages long, filled with screenshots of apps documenting what he needs to observe and correct, became Kansal’s trademark.
As the company’s new chief product officer, Kansal has new challenges that could lead his dog hooding strategy to test. It will integrate self-driving cars into the Uber app.
“What does it mean to integrate with the platform? Because that’s a simple word for Kansal, who was appointed to the role of CPO in October after Sundeep Jain left.
In reality, this means a technical matchmaking dance on the backend of the Uber app that is triggered whenever a user requests a hood delivery or ride. Self-driving cars add another layer of complexity. The Uber market (where matching and pricing decisions are made) must immediately weigh a variety of factors and decide whether or not it is necessary to send human drivers and robotic vehicles.
Uber app robot
Uber once aimed at developing self-driving vehicle technology in-house, and turned into a partnership to open up market share in the early industry. To date, Uber has collaborated with 14 autonomous technology companies worldwide.
The company partnered with Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle, to offer Robotaxi rides at Phoenix in 2023. It also secures deals with sidewalk delivery robotics companies offering Avride, Cartken and Robotics to autonomously provide food on the Uber Eats Network. Avride also plans to launch Robotaxis on the Uber app in Dallas later this year.
Kansal is in the driver’s seat about what these AV product experiences look like and how they work on the Uber app. And here’s his next big test.
Waymo and Uber launched their Robotaxi service in Austin this week. This shows the evolution of both companies’ AV strategies. The so-called “Waymo on Uber” Robotaxi service is an exclusive partnership. The only way to evoke Waymo Robotaxi in Austin – and soon Atlanta will take place via the Uber app.
The Robotaxi service divides responsibility from the way Waymo has performed traditional operations.
Waymo will be responsible for certain aspects of vehicle testing, roadside assistance, and rider support. Uber manages fleet services such as vehicle cleaning, maintenance, inspection, charging and depot operations through a company called Moove Cars, which is rebranded as Avomo.
Importantly, Uber handles matching, price and routing to Robotaxis destinations. The balance between human drivers and robots can prove particularly polarized. Teamster, a trade union representing drivers, is the enemy of Robotaxis and the voices of self-driving trucks. Drivers also share concerns that Robotaxis will either cut pay or take away jobs entirely.
Kansal, which helped deploy Teens for Teens Service’s Uber, hopes that it will evolve and improve as AV programs learn.
“We learn a lot about managing and maintaining self-driving cars and charging,” he said. “We’re setting up a partner and fleet operation, so we learn a lot,” he added that Uber is drawn from his experience managing the supply of human-driven cars and applies it to Robotaxis.
“I’m sure it’s something that will make you succeed,” he said. “Of course, we adjust it further, as we learn, and whatever we learn and adjust, we apply it not only to Austin, but to other places.”
Kansal said he is confident in the Uber Waymo service model and the use of fleet operators, but he said other options could emerge in the future.
“We are sure we will try out different models, but given our experience with fleet providers, I feel very comfortable with this model,” he said.
Uber’s AV Past
Uber has a controversial relationship with autonomous vehicle technology. The company saw AVS as the winner’s take race under the leadership of co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick. And, in Uber’s view, the only way to win was to create your own business unit.
The ride company began tracking self-driving cars in early 2015, when it announced a strategic partnership with the National Robotics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. With the agreement to work on developing driverless car technology, Uber has poached dozens of NREC researchers and scientists. A year later, Uber acquired an autonomous truck startup called Otto, a startup founded by Anthony Levandowski, one of Google’s star engineers.
The acquisition brought legal issues to Google, which led to two arbitration requests against Levandowski and Ron. Waymo filed separate lawsuits against Uber in February 2017 for the theft of trade secrets and patent infringement. Waymo claimed in the lawsuit, which went to trial, but ended in a settlement in 2018, but Lewandowsky stole the trade secret, which was later used by Uber.
Uber was one of the autonomous test vehicles that struck and killed a pedestrian in March 2018 (a human safety driver behind the wheel) that quickly got involved in another fatal controversy. The entire industry has paused and Uber has stopped testing all.
Uber spun the Uber ATG in the spring of 2019 after securing $1 billion in funding from Toyota, auto parts maker Denso and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. But it was an expensive company that still employed over 1,000 people and had at least 250 self-driving cars in its fleet. Uber eventually sold ATG to Startup Aurora, giving the riding company a 26% stake in the total company in a complex transaction that involves stock exchanges and an investment of $400 million.
Kansal said Uber’s strategy has shifted from building high-tech internally to partnering with AV companies like Waymo, but the company has always believed in autonomy. Still, the challenges and controversy continue to bubble up – whether they are true believers.
Kansal hopes that applying his DogFooding system to Robotaxis will result in quick and practical changes that will smooth out conflicts in the AV business. And he’s already working on it, riding a Waymolobotaxis to get in and out of Austin.
It’s still a tall order. According to Kansal, he completed 1 million trips per hour today.
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