SAN FRANCISCO, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Uber has stopped developing self-driving trucks as the program is no longer competitive in the freight shipping industry, the U.S. ride-hailing firm announced Monday.
Uber said it wants to refocus on the self-driving car program, which was paused following a crash in which a Uber autonomous car killed a pedestrian in the southwestern state of Arizona in March.
Employees in the San Francisco-based self-driving truck division will be relocated to other internal units, including the Pittsburgh-based self-driving car program.
Despite the shutdown, Uber Freight, a business unit that helps match truck drivers with shipping companies, will not be affected.
Uber ventured into driverless vehicles in early 2015. Controversy was aroused when it purchased Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by a former Google engineer, in 2016. Google later accused the engineer of stealing confidential files before he left the company.
