Uber ignores Calif. threats, keeps testing self-driving cars

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SAN FRANCISCO — Uber on Monday said it's continuing to test its 11 self-driving cars on the streets of San Francisco, despite the threat of legal action from the California Attorney General's office if the company does not "immediately" remove its test vehicles from public roads.

The Attorney General's letter, sent late Friday, orders San Francisco-based Uber to apply for the appropriate permits from the state's Department of Motor Vehicles before continuing to test its cars. If the company does not, "the Attorney General will seek injunctive and other appropriate relief" to stop the testing, the letter said.

In the letter, the word "immediately" was italicized for emphasis.

In an email to USA TODAY Monday, Uber confirmed that its testing program in San Francisco was on-going.

Uber says its self-driving cars don't require a DMV permit because the systems it is using are no different from current advanced driver-assistance systems that help with parking and collision avoidance, the same systems available in some luxury cars today. 

In a Friday afternoon media call, Anthony Levandowski, who runs Uber's autonomous car programs, said the permitting process doesn’t apply to the company and that “we cannot in good conscience” comply with a regulation that the company doesn’t believe applies to it.

California doesn't agree. 

California Vehicle Code Section 38750 requires the DMV to adopt regulations governing both the testing and public use of autonomous vehicles on California roadways. 

Under the state's definition, autonomous technology means "technology that has the capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator."

It explicitly excludes vehicles that are equipped with collision avoidance systems, such as electronic blind spot assistance, automated emergency braking systems, park assist, adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, lane departure warning, and traffic jam and queuing assist.

Although the term "self-driving" sounds as if the car functions without human oversight, Uber clarified in its call that during the road tests there are humans in the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat, both of whom are monitoring the vehicle's actions. 

Uber is not building a vehicle that has no steering wheel, pedals or need for a human driver but instead creating technology to give "a significant level" of driver assistance while still requiring driver oversight, he said.

Any time the vehicle is operating, the testers have their hands on the steering wheel,  Levandowski said.

“They have them in the 5 and 7 o’clock positions,” he said.

In addition, just as in cars used in Driver’s Ed, there’s a secondary set of controls on the passenger side, “so just like an instructor they’re able to take over for the driver,” he said.

The DMV sent a cease-and-desist letter to Uber on Dec. 14 that said that under the California Vehicle Code, an autonomous vehicle must have a permit to ensure that "those testing the vehicle have provided an adequate level of financial responsibility, have adequately trained qualified test drivers on the safe operation of the autonomous technology; and will notify the DMV when the vehicles have been involved in a collision."

The ride-hailing start-up, which has a long history of fighting with municipal authorities— usually because it was wresting market share from the highly regulated taxi business — says that the DMV's definition of an autonomous vehicle doesn't apply. Uber's reasoning: It's not building a vehicle that has no steering wheel, pedals, or human driver, but rather, is creating a technology to give a "significant level" of driver assistance while still requiring driver oversight, Levandowski said. 

ADDWhat is DMV's definition of autonomous vehidle? What is the cost to getting one? 

Just how autonomous is autonomous?

Uber is “trying to make the argument that the way the regulations are written, their car — even though it has much more real-life capability — falls in the same bucket as the Teslas that are on the road,” said auto analyst Mike Ramsey with Gartner.

Currently, Tesla offers an Autopilot mode that is capable of matching speed to traffic conditions, keeping a car within a lane, automatically changing lanes without requiring driver input, self-parking near a parking spot and being summoned from a garage. However, drivers are not able to take their hands off the car’s steering wheel for more than a few seconds without an alarm sounding.

That conforms to what the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration considers a Level 2 autonomous vehicle system, in which the driver cedes control in certain limited driving situations but is still responsible for monitoring both the roadway and safe operation, and is expected to be available for control at all times and on short notice. Tesla does have a self-driving permit for California, but not for its Level 2 functionality. 

At the NHTSA's Level 3, or limited self-driving automation, a vehicle is capable of being fully in control “of all safety-critical functions under certain traffic or environmental conditions.” The driver is expected to be available for “occasional” control, but with a comfortable transition time.

Given the amount of expensive technology packed into Uber’s test vehicles, Ramsey said he “wasn’t persuaded” by Uber’s argument that its cars are more in line with Tesla's, which are Level 2s.  The car can do a lot more than just lane changing, he said.

It could be that Uber hopes to make the point that the entire field of self-driving cars is evolving so rapidly that it’s much too early to try to regulate the technology, said Ramsey.

"Anthony [Levandowski] and Travis [Kalanick, Uber CEO] are willing to have a little battle with the state in order to press this point now," he said.

Uber has been testing its self-driving cars in San Francisco and Pittsburgh, Pa., for more than a month. In San Francisco, the company is testing as many as 11 sensor-packed Volvo XC90 SUVs in San Francisco. Some of the cars actually pick up riders, others are used to log mapping and sensor research miles.

As least 20 other companies have applied for and received the DMV permits to test autonomous vehicles on California roads, including Google, Tesla, Ford and Nvidia.

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