Uber executive Sachin Kansal has a reputation for dogfooding — the tactic of using one’s own products and services to root out problems and make improvements.
As he ascended Uber’s executive ladder over the past eight years, Kansal ratcheted up 700 trips delivering food or people to their destinations. Lengthy reports, often dozens of pages long and filled with screenshots of the app that documented his observations and what needed to be fixed, have become a Kansal trademark.
As the company’s new chief product officer, Kansal has a new challenge that may put his dogfooding strategy to the test: integrating autonomous vehicles into the Uber app, including Waymo robotaxis in a high-profile launch that kicked off this week in Austin.
“What does it mean to integrate with the platform? Because those are easy words to say,” mused Kansal, who was appointed to the CPO role in October after Sundeep Jain left.
In practice, this means a technological matchmaking dance on the backend of the Uber app that’s triggered every time a user requests a food delivery or ride. Autonomous vehicles add another layer of complexity. Uber’s marketplace — where the matching and pricing decisions are made — will have to weigh a variety of factors in an instant and decide whether a human driver or a robot car should be sent.
Robots on the Uber app
Uber, once intent on developing autonomous vehicle technology in-house, has turned to partnerships to carve out market share in the nascent industry. To date, Uber is working with 14 autonomous technology companies globally.
The company partnered with Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary Waymo in 2023 to offer robotaxi rides in Phoenix. It has also secured deals with sidewalk delivery robot companies Avride, Cartken, and Serve Robotics to deliver food autonomously on the Uber Eats network. Avride is also planning to launch its robotaxis on the Uber app in Dallas later this year.
Kansal is in the driver’s seat on what these AV product experiences will look like and how they will function in the Uber app. And his next big test is here.
Waymo and Uber launched this week a robotaxi service in Austin that marks an evolution in the two companies’ AV strategies. The so-called “Waymo on Uber” robotaxi service is an exclusive partnership. The only way to hail a Waymo robotaxi in Austin — and soon Atlanta — will be via the Uber app.
The robotaxi service also splits up the responsibility, a departure from how Waymo has traditionally run its operations.
Waymo will be in charge of vehicle testing, roadside assistance, and certain aspects of rider support. Uber will manage the fleet services such as vehicle cleaning, maintenance, inspections, charging, and depot operations through a company called Moove Cars, which is rebranding to Avomo.
Importantly, Uber will handle the matching, pricing, and routing of the robotaxis to their destinations. The balance between human drivers and robots could prove to be particularly polarizing. The Teamsters, a labor union that represents drivers, is a vocal opponent to robotaxis and self-driving trucks. Drivers have also shared their concerns that robotaxis will reduce their pay or take their jobs altogether.
Kansal, who was instrumental in rolling out the Uber for Teens service, expects the AV program to evolve and improve as the company learns.
“We’re going to learn a lot in terms of management and maintenance and charging of autonomous vehicles,” he said. “We’re going to learn a lot as we are setting up the fleet operations with our partner.” He added that Uber will also pull from its experience of managing the supply of human driven cars and apply it to robotaxis.
“I feel pretty confident it is something that is going to be successful,” he said. “Of course, as we learn, we will further tune it. And whatever we learn and tune, we will not only apply that in Austin, we will apply it in other places as well.”
Kansal said he is confident in the “Waymo on Uber” service model and its use of a fleet operator, but he said other options may emerge in the future.
“I’m sure we will try different models, but we feel very comfortable with this model, just given our experience working with fleet providers,” he said.
Uber’s AV past
Uber has had a controversial relationship with autonomous vehicle technology. The company, while under the leadership of co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, saw AVs as a winner-takes-all race. And in Uber’s view, the only way to win was to create its own business unit.
The ride-hailing company kicked off its pursuit of autonomous vehicles in early 2015 when it announced a strategic partnership with Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Center. The agreement to work on developing driverless car technology resulted in Uber poaching dozens of NREC researchers and scientists. A year later, Uber acquired a self-driving truck startup called Otto, a startup founded by one of Google’s star engineers, Anthony Levandowski, along with three other Google veterans: Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette.
That acquisition led to legal problems with Google, which made two arbitration demands against Levandowski and Ron. Waymo separately filed a lawsuit against Uber in February 2017 for trade secret theft and patent infringement. Waymo alleged in the suit, which went to trial but ended in a settlement in 2018, that Levandowski stole trade secrets, which were then used by Uber.
Uber was soon involved in another deadlier controversy when one of its autonomous test vehicles — which had a human safety driver behind the wheel — struck and killed a pedestrian in March 2018. The entire industry paused, and Uber halted all testing.
Uber spun out Uber ATG in spring 2019 after securing $1 billion in funding from Toyota, auto parts maker Denso and SoftBank’s Vision Fund. But it was still a costly enterprise that employed more than 1,000 people and had at least 250 self-driving vehicles in its fleet. Ultimately, Uber sold ATG to startup Aurora in a complex deal that involved an equity exchange and a $400 million investment that gave the ride-hailing company a 26% stake in the combined company.
While Uber’s strategy has changed from building the tech in-house to partnering with AV companies like Waymo, the company has always been a believer in autonomy, Kansal said. Still, the challenges and controversies will continue to bubble up — true believer or not.
Kansal hopes applying his dogfooding system to robotaxis will yield quick and actionable changes that will smooth out any bumps in its AV business. And he is already at it, traveling to and from Austin to ride in Waymo robotaxis.
It’s still a tall order; today Uber completes a million trips an hour, according to Kansal, who wants every single one to be flawless.
