Uber's Self-Driving Taxi Was Spotted Today And It's A Bigger Deal Than You Think

This is the week of self-driving taxi spotting. In Pittsburgh today, the first Uber self-driving taxi--what appeared to be a Ford Focus--was seen roving along with 'Uber' stamped on the door, and a whack of technology strapped to the roof. It comes quickly on the heels of an announcement by the disruptive tech company last week that it would be releasing a test run of "supervised" self-driving taxis by the end of the month. The car was spotted and tweeted by Helen Rosner, editor of Eater. And drivers are able to ride in this taxi for free.

I find it interesting that Uber has disrupted the taxi industry by putting the power to earn money by driving people around into the hands of the common person, and then is now planning to steal that power away by subjecting the driver to a mere machine 'supervisor'--until of course the technology advances the 'supervisor' into a kind of torpid obsolescence. As well, Uber wants to eventually replace car ownership with self-driving fleets of taxis. This, according to Kalanick will free up road space for more parks and people's time for greater productivity. The one thing it won't do, and we're starting to see this, is provide greater freedom of mobility. 

Uber's Travis Kalanick on TED

You see, the one good thing about having a car is I can get wherever I need to go whenever I need to get there. In an emergency, I have the freedom to get to a hospital. What happens, however, when I don't have a vehicle anymore, but must rely on an application on my phone to dispatch one? What if the app doesn't work? What if I'm outside of range? What if there's a malfunction of the self-driving car and it takes me to the wrong location? 

What seems to be a more attractive 'grand strategy' as it were is Tesla's: You own the vehicle, and earn money on it by joining it up with a fleet that drives people around while you're working, resting, or on holidays. And the money made with the car is put toward the overall cost of owning it. I like this notion very much; I think car ownership is a good thing. See the difference? One optimizes freedom, the other limits it. 

Nevertheless, Uber wasn't the only self-driving taxi to make headlines; the Singapore taxi company nuTonomy (my spell-check ironically just suggested adjusting that word to 'autonomy') seemed to preempt Uber's first spotting by announcing it's operational this week. According to BGR,

nuTonomy announced in a press release that the starting August 25th, users in Singapore would be invited to try the service. The trial will be available in the one-north business district, where the company has been conducting self-driving car tests since April.

The nuTonomy of Singapore

And the company's services are going to be offered for free just as Uber's. 

So we're in the midst of a massive change in transportation. On the one hand seems to be Musk's plan to transform the world through vehicle ownership and on the other companies like Uber and nuTonomy (my spell check just defaulted again to 'au-tonomy') that hold out the promise of putting the means of transportation into the hands of a company.