Uber has been forced to introduce a monthly cap on AI use after accruing a monumental bill – and experts suggest it’s an incident that’s muddying the waters on ROI.

In April, Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga revealed the company used its entire annual AI budget in just four months, per reports from The Information.

Indeed, the huge bill came after the company encouraged increased use of the technology, incentivizing staff by introducing a leader board to track consumption.

Recent reports from Bloomberg claim the company has now introduced a $1,500 monthly cap per employee, based on the tools they use - which includes Claude Code and Cursor.

Employee usage will also be tracked through an internal dashboard, although caps can be increased given employees are given express permission by the company.

Tokenmaxxing is the new industry buzzword

The move by Uber comes amid rising concerns about the cost of AI use at companies across a range of industries, with “tokenmaxxing” having recently emerged as the latest industry buzzword.

Tokenmaxxing is a trend whereby enterprises measure AI usage based on the number of tokens consumed by employees. Essentially, it’s a way to measure productivity by showcasing the use of the technology – the higher the token use rate, the more productive you are.

In March, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested that token use could be used as a means of measuring productivity among software engineers. Companies such as Meta, meanwhile, have reportedly introduced internal leader boards akin to Uber’s aimed at showing off AI use.

The trend has already sparked controversy in the industry, largely due to the fact that increased usage doesn’t necessarily equate to higher levels of productivity.

Martin Reynolds, field CTO at Harness, said the introduction of a spend cap at Uber is “treating the system rather than the cause”, and companies are basing success with the technology on usage, rather than with tangible examples of productivity improvements.

“The real issue is that many organizations are still measuring AI success through consumption rather than outcomes,” he said.

Reynolds suggested that tracking AI use “made sense” during the early days of adoption and was crucial as a means of measuring uptake levels as well as how it influenced workflows.

Now, though, usage metrics have the potential to “distort behavior” and incentivize workers to use the technology simply for the sake of it.

“Employees are rewarded for generating more prompts, tokens, and model interactions – regardless of whether those activities create meaningful business value,” he said.

Distorted ROI metrics

The long-term outcome here, according to Reynolds, is that tracking AI use in this manner could create a convoluted picture for business leaders.

Enterprises think they’re getting bang for their buck and employees are embracing the technology, but it’s needless waste - and that will distort how they measure return on investment (ROI).

“As a result, business leaders can’t confidently say whether AI usage is driving results or simply inflating the bill,” he added.

ROI with AI has been a long-running challenge for enterprises, both in terms of measuring it and whether they’re actually reporting clear-cut gains.

In a survey conducted by PwC in January, executives reported growing frustration at the lack of financial returns. Similar research from IDC shows that many organisations are disregarding poor return with AI largely due to a fear of missing out and falling behind competitors.

Measuring success

According to Reynolds, a $1,500 spending cap for Uber employees “doesn’t do much to tackle the root of the issue”. Organizations need to prioritize cost visibility and build a culture where usage can be attributed to tangible business outcomes.

This, he said, will play a key role in “highlighting whether it genuinely contributed to customer experience or revenue growth”.

“That’s how you make AI economically intelligent,” he said. “Until organizations can measure value, not just spend, they'll keep swinging between uncapped excess and blunt rationing – and leaving the real ROI on the table.”

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Uber has been fined €290 million by the Dutch data protection authority for transferring the personal data of European drivers to the US without appropriate safeguards.

According to the Dutch DPA, the transfers - which Uber has now halted - were a serious violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

"In Europe, the GDPR protects the fundamental rights of people, by requiring businesses and governments to handle personal data with due careBut sadly, this is not self-evident outside Europe,” said Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen.

"Think of governments that can tap data on a large scale. That is why businesses are usually obliged to take additional measures if they store personal data of Europeans outside the European Union. Uber did not meet the requirements of the GDPR to ensure the level of protection to the data with regard to transfers to the US. That is very serious."

The investigation was prompted by complaints from more than 170 French drivers to the French human rights interest group the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (LDH), which subsequently submitted a complaint to the French DPA. 

However, Uber's European headquarters is based in the Netherlands, making it the official supervisory authority.

The Dutch DPA found Uber collected sensitive information of drivers from Europe and retained it on servers in the US. The data included account details and taxi licenses, as well as location data, photos, payment details, identity documents, and in some cases even the criminal and medical data of drivers.

The transfers continued for more than two years.

There are, or have been, various ways to make US data transfers without breaching the GDPR. However, the European Court of Justice invalidated the EU-US Privacy Shield in 2020, and Uber stopped using the alternative of Standard Contractual Clauses in August 2021. It has since switched to using the successor to the Privacy Shield.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe) said Uber was put in a difficult situation by the EU's decision to invalidate Privacy Shield back in 2020. This move, it said, left European and American companies without any clear guidelines for transatlantic data flows for a period of nearly three years.

Meanwhile, the Commission ruled out the use of Standard Contractual Clauses for non-EU companies already subject to European data protection rules, leaving companies without any straightforward mechanism to move EU data to servers in the US.

"The fact that the Dutch Data Protection Authority today decided to issue a massive fine to a tech company for EU-US data flows that happened back in 2021 ignores reality. The busiest internet route in the world could not simply be put on hold for three entire years while governments worked to establish a new legal framework for these data flows," said CCIA Europe’s head of policy, Alexandre Roure.

"Any retroactive fines by data protection authorities are especially worrisome given that these very privacy watchdogs failed to provide helpful guidance during this period of significant legal uncertainty, in absence of any clear legal framework."

This is the third fine imposed on Uber by the Dutch DPA, which hit the company with a €600,000 penalty in 2018 and another for €10 million in 2023. Uber has objected to this latest fine.

In a year of upheavals that saw the death of Queen Elizabeth II, three changes of UK prime minister, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one thing that has remained unfortunately consistent is cyber criminals ramping up attacks.

Some trends prevail: Ransomware remains popular, fuelled by the sheer volume of revenue available to the gangs and criminals involved in the lucrative market. The Lapsus$ group has been particularly active in 2022, allegedly breaching the likes of Microsoft, Uber, and Nvidia.

The supply chain is still a common vector of attack, with the Okta breach at the beginning of the year showing the damage that can be done to a firm’s reputation if it fails to act quickly in disclosing an incident.

Cyber criminals have also started to broaden their horizons to focus on digital currencies, with cryptocurrency exchanges, platforms, and personal wallets increasingly targeted over the course of the year.

We’ve rounded up the scariest security horror stories of 2022.

Log4Shell vulnerability wreaks havoc throughout 2022

The Log4Shell vulnerability continues to wreak havoc on businesses a year after it first sent shockwaves through the security industry. Discovered in December 2021, the zero-day remote code execution (RCE) flaw in Java logger Log4j was so impactful because of the sheer number of applications and services it powers: Log4j is used by millions of computers across many organisations and underpins multiple internet services and applications, including Twitter, Microsoft, and Amazon.

With a 10/10 critical rating, the Log4Shell flaw – which has the NIST National Vulnerability Database designation CVE-2021-44228 – is relatively easy to exploit, because it doesn’t require privileged access to be used in attacks. It’s therefore no surprise that just 24 hours after it was disclosed, researchers at security firm Checkpoint recorded almost 200,000 attempts to exploit the issue. A week after Log4Shell went public, cyber criminals and other malicious actors had used the flaw as part of over 1.2 million attacks globally.

The Log4Shell issue persisted well into 2022. In February, the flaw was used by Iranian state sponsored attackers targeting the US government. Even as late as October 2022, it was reported that a China government-linked group had used the vulnerability to target multiple entities in the Middle East.

In November, security firm Tenable found that despite patching and mitigating the issue, as many as 72% of firms remain vulnerable to Log4Shell.

Massive hack on Uber claimed by the infamous Lapsus$

Uber found itself caught up in one of the biggest security breaches of the year when malicious adversaries were able to gain access to systems after fooling an employee into handing over details.

News of the breach was first reported by the New York Times in September, with the attacker themself informing the publication of the incident. Shortly afterwards, the company pointed the finger at the Lapsus$ hacking group, which has targeted other technology firms including Microsoft and Nvidia, as the originators of the attack.

Seven people were subsequently arrested in March by City of London Police, which is leading the international investigation into Lapsus$, with two teenagers appearing in court in April.

Uber said the adversary managed to gain access to a contractor’s account by spamming multi-factor authentication prompts. Uber suspects the contractor’s device was infected with malware, allowing attackers to steal credentials and sell them online.

Using the stolen credentials, the attackers were able to gain access to some of Uber’s internal systems, including Slack messages, a finance tool for invoices and a dashboard where security researchers report vulnerabilities.

Uber said customer data was not compromised, but the firm quickly embarked on a hiring spree to shore up its security defences.

Ransomware continues to hit organisations across the globe

Ransomware continued to ravage organisations across the world in 2022, with two attacks in particular standing out.

The first was a double whammy affecting Costa Rica, which suffered a series of attacks during the year. In April, the country was hit by a cyber assault targeting critical civil infrastructure allegedly perpetrated by Russian group Conti. Among the services disrupted were international trade and tax collection, with affected organisations forced to rely on pen and paper to get things done and the government ultimately declaring a national state of emergency.

The following month, just as it was getting back on its feet, the country was hit by a new ransomware attack, this time targeting the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), which runs its public healthcare. Over 30,000 medical appointments had to be rescheduled after the Hive ransomware group – which is thought to have some links with the original attackers – took out IT systems across the country’s hospitals and clinics

Overall, the attacks cost organisations operating in Costa Rica hundreds-of-millions of US dollars.

The second big ransomware incident of the year took place in October, when Australian health insurance firm Medibank was hit by a ransomware group linked to Russian-speaking REvil. When the company refused to pay the ransom, the gang published sensitive medical records including customers’ names, passport numbers, dates of birth and claim information. The attackers even separated the stolen customer data into “naughty” and “good” lists, depending on whether diagnosis was linked to factors such as drug addiction or alcohol abuse.

Because it’s such a lucrative business model with a growing number of “as a service” offerings to outsource to, ransomware isn’t going to go away any time soon and will continue to threaten businesses well into 2023 and beyond.

Bitcoin heists hit on cryptocurrency exchanges, platforms, and personal wallets

Cyber attackers will always follow the money, and cryptocurrency is no exception. What’s more, crypto trades aren’t linked to people’s identities, making them an attractive prospect for criminals.

In October, it was reported that investors have lost over $3 billion (£2.46 billion) to attackers across 125 hacks in 2022 so far. This is likely to surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking on record, according to blockchain analytics company Chainalysis.

Among the big incidents in 2022, the start of the year saw Matt Damon-backed cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com hacked, impacting 483 users. The site admitted attackers were able to make off with $35 million (£28.7 million) of unauthorised withdrawals of Bitcoin and Ether as a result of the heist.

Then in February, attackers stole $320 million (£262 million) from the Wormhole protocol – a bridge that links the Ethereum and Solana cryptocurrency blockchains. The following month, the Ronin Network lost over $620 million (£509 million) after an attacker compromised private keys and organised fake withdrawals. Then in April, Beanstalk Farms – a network to balance out supply and demand of cryptocurrencies – was attacked and $182 million (£149 million) of digital currency stolen.

In August, attackers were able to breach Nomad, a programme allowing users to exchange tokens from one blockchain to another, stealing around $190 million (£156 million) in Bitcoin.

Russia-Ukraine war raises cyber attack fears

Cyber security experts began to warn about the risk of widespread cyber attacks originating from Russia as soon as it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Fears were rife that Russian hackers would attempt to compromise critical infrastructure such as electric grids and that these attacks could also target Ukraine’s allies, including the UK and the US.

In March, US President Joe Biden warned businesses in critical sectors to be on alert amid the growing Russian cyber threat. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) also warned that HermeticWiper malware was in use against Ukrainian organisations and said it could impact other countries.

But in general, attacks have been limited and simple in their scope, at least partly because the US and Europe provided significant cyber expertise to Ukraine and other Eastern European nations prior to the war.

That’s not to say there have been no ill effects and some attacks caused disruption in the early days of the conflict, especially to communications services. One of the first cyber assaults on broadband company Viasat on 24 February began approximately one hour before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. The NCSC said Russia was “almost certainly responsible for the attack”, which impacted personal and commercial internet users, wind farms in central Europe, and the Ukrainian military, which is assumed to have been its original intended target.

In March, Ukraine’s biggest fixed-line telecommunications company, Ukrtelecom was hit by a severe cyber attack which took the company’s services across the country down.

ProxyNotShell Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities plague admins

In 2021, the ProxyShell and ProxyLogon vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange dominated headlines, partly because they were so easy to exploit. One year later, a new pair of vulnerabilities affecting Exchange Server has emerged, collectively known as ProxyNotShell.

Discovered in September by security researchers at Vietnam-based company GTSC, the two zero-days received a number of attempted fixes before Microsoft issued a patch in November. GTSC said in its report that it had noticed in-the-wild exploitation of both vulnerabilities for at least a month before publishing its findings, and Microsoft later confirmed the flaws were being used in attacks.

Tracked as CVE-2022-41040 and CVE-2022-41082, the already-exploited flaws are used one after the other to elevate privileges via a server side request forgery (SSRF) to gain access to Microsoft Exchange’s PowerShell backend, then carry out a remote code execution on a vulnerable server.

Both issues affect Microsoft Exchange versions 2013, 2016, and 2019, and are rated as having a high severity with a CVSSv3 score of 8.8/10.

Even now, the flaws are sending shivers down Exchange Server admins’ spines because while an attacker does need to be authenticated, they are very easy to exploit.

Okta hack highlights the PR side of incident response

When Okta was breached in January 2022, hundreds of its clients were affected. Yet the company, which provides “single sign on” software and manages logins for over 100 million customers, only admitted it had been hacked via a third-party customer support provider two months later, in March. The admission came after the Lapsus$ group claimed it had breached the firm, posting screenshots.

Okta initially released a statement saying the breach “was investigated and contained” but admitted the screenshots shared online are “connected to this January event”. It also said there is “no evidence of ongoing malicious activity beyond the activity detected in January”.

However, as concern about the incident mounted, the firm released a number of blogs. In one, Okta chief security officer David Bradbury said hackers had accessed the computer of a customer support engineer employed by Sykes, part of the Sitel Group, over a five-day period. He said the incident was "analogous to walking away from your computer at a coffee shop, whereby a stranger has – virtually, in this case – sat down at your machine and is using the mouse and keyboard".

He emphasised that access was limited and Okta itself had not been breached, however.

Okta admitted later that it “made a mistake” delaying disclosure of the breach. “In January, we did not know the extent of the Sitel issue – only that we detected and prevented an account takeover attempt and that Sitel had retained a third-party forensic firm to investigate,” the company said. “At that time, we didn’t recognise that there was a risk to Okta and our customers. We should have more actively and forcefully compelled information from Sitel.”

As well as highlighting the importance of supply chain security, the Okta breach demonstrates the need for transparency and clarity in the event of an incident. In an age of increasing cyber attacks, customers understand that breaches happen, but they also expect a quick and clear response.

Ride hailing giant Uber has revealed it is responding to data breach that it says occurred as a result of a compromised third-party vendor.

Over the weekend, a threat actor operating under the name ‘UberLeaks’ posted sensitive information to a popular hacking forum, which they claimed originated from Uber and Uber Eats.

The threat actors claimed that data included source code and IT asset management reports, as well as domain login details, email addresses, and sensitive corporate information, according to a report from BleepingComputer.

The information, which has been analysed by security experts, is believed to include email addresses and information pertaining to more than 77,000 employees.

Initial reports suggest that the incident is not related to a previous breach disclosed by the firm in October.

A spokesperson for Uber told BleepingComputer that the breach is “related to an incident at a third-party vendor and unrelated to our security incident in September.”

“Based on our initial review of the information available, the code is not owned by Uber; however, we are continuing to look into this matter,” the spokesperson added.

Third-party vendor breach

Following a preliminary investigation into the breach, Uber has since confirmed that the incident came as a result of a compromised third-party vendor, Teqtivity.

Teqtivity is one of a number of third-party companies that Uber relies on to support services. The firm helps Uber track, monitor and manage IT assets, including mobile devices and computers.

In a statement, Teqtivity confirmed the breach and said it has launched an investigation into the matter.

“We are aware of customer data that was compromised due to unauthorised access to our systems by a malicious third party,” the company said.

“The third party was able to gain access to our Teqtivity AWS backup server that housed Teqtivity code and data files related to Teqtivity customers.”

According to the firm, exposed data includes information pertaining to:

• User information such as work location details, full names and work email addresses
• Device information, including serial numbers, make, models and technical specifications

Teqtivity revealed it is working with a third-party forensics team to investigate the breach. A third-party security team has also been retained to begin penetration testing of the firm’s infrastructure.

"Our investigation is ongoing. However, we have notified affected customers of the incident and have taken steps to ensure the situation is contained and have prevented this type of event from happening again,” the firm added in its statement.

Initial posts by ‘UberLeaks’ claimed that the threat actor(s) had breached Uber’s internal systems. However, the company insists that it is yet to observe any malicious activity on their network.

“The third-party is still investigating but has confirmed that the data we’ve seen came from its systems, and to date we have not seen any malicious access to Uber internal systems,” the firm told BleepingComputer.

Third-party security risks

This incident once again raises questions over third-party vulnerabilities and the potential risks posed to organisations.

In recent years, Marriott, Instagram and DoorDash have experienced data breaches as a result of third-party vendor vulnerabilities.

A recent study by Cyentia Institute found that nearly one-third (31%) of vendors are considered a “material risk” in the event of a data breach.

This growing issue has prompted organisations to implement measures to mitigate threats across the supply chain, with 79% stating that they now have formal programmes in place to manage third-party risk.

Similarly, nearly two-thirds (60%) said that managing third-party vendor risks has become a key priority for their organisation.

Ian McShane, VP of strategy at Arctic Wolf warned that growing threats and high-profile compromises have highlighted the need for businesses to “understand who their suppliers are” and reduce risk by keeping tabs on vendors operating within their environments.

“In recent years, we’ve seen that companies are becoming more at risk of being either the ‘target’ or the ‘transport’ that allows other organisations to be hacked,” he explained.

“Vendor risk assessment is a critical aspect of any organisation's security operations and this must be a priority for 2023,” McShane added.

Uber has embarked on a hiring spree for security personnel in the wake of its data breach last week and has also revealed new details about who was behind the attack.

On Friday last week, several open positions appeared on LinkedIn just one day after the ride-hailing tech giant confirmed the breach to the public.

Roles that are still open for applications include senior security incident commander to lead incident response, security engineer and security engineering manager at the company's threat detection division, and senior security engineers across applications security, enterprise security, and investigations.

The positions opened for applicants the day after the attack was confirmed and shows Uber’s commitment to tightening its security following the breach.

In an update to customers on Monday, Uber also confirmed several other details about who was behind the attack and how the cyber criminals were able to successfully breach the company.

Uber attributed the attack to the LAPSUS$ hacking group which came to prominence in early 2022, claiming successful attacks on major companies such as Microsoft, Okta, Nvidia, Samsung, and T-Mobile.

The group has been described as both “competent and incompetent at the same time” by experts and is believed to be run by young cyber criminals in Portugal, Brazil, and the UK whose ages range between 16 and 21.

Unlike many emerging cyber criminal organisations, LAPSUS$ does not operate on a ransomware model and in the case of the Uber hack, the company said the group managed to gain access to a contractor’s account by spamming multi-factor authentication (MFA) prompts.

Uber believed the contractor’s device had been infected with malware, allowing hackers to steal credentials and sell them to LAPSUS$ on the dark web.

From there, the attackers repeatedly tried to gain access to the contractor’s account using the stolen credentials, and the repeated attempts would have delivered a frustrating number of prompts to the contractor’s phone.

The contractor eventually accepted one of the prompts allowing the attackers full access to their account.

This is a known attack method in the industry and relies on sending so many prompts that the target becomes annoyed with all the notifications and accepts one to make them stop.

LAPSUS$ is also known for having deployed such tactics in the past, saying they prefer to carry them out while the target sleeps to maximise effectiveness.

“From there, the attacker accessed several other employee accounts which ultimately gave the attacker elevated permissions to a number of tools, including G Suite and Slack,” said Uber.

“The attacker then posted a message to a company-wide Slack channel, which many of you saw, and reconfigured Uber’s OpenDNS to display a graphic image to employees on some internal sites.”

Uber said the attackers were able to access and download Slack messages - the content of which was not specified - and download data from its finance team’s invoice management tool.

LAPSUS$ also accessed Uber’s HackerOne dashboard. HackerOne is a security bug and vulnerability reporting platform, though the only reports available to the hackers were regarding vulnerabilities that had already been remediated, Uber said.

The company confirmed nothing else was affected, including its code base or any of its public-facing apps or technologies.

Uber also confirmed that LAPSUS$ was unable to access any customer data stored by its cloud providers, including AWS’ S3.

“We’re working with several leading digital forensics firms as part of the investigation,” said Uber, which also said the investigation is still ongoing.

“We will also take this opportunity to continue to strengthen our policies, practices, and technology to further protect Uber against future attacks.”

The Rockstar link

Uber also revealed that it believed LAPSUS$ was the hacking group behind the recent breach of Rockstar Games - the developers of popular video game franchises such as Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.

The studio announced over the weekend that it had fallen victim to a significant data breach which involved the leaking of footage from the company's pre-alpha version of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI game.

“We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorised third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto [game],” said Rockstar Games.

Uber said it is working with the FBI and US Justice Department to investigate the incident further. It’s unclear if the authorities are also investigating the incident at Rockstar Games, too.

A smishing attack on Thursday led to a wide range of Uber's internal systems being breached by a seemingly unaffiliated teenage hacker, it has been claimed.

A report first emerged in The New York Times that the ride-sharing company had been hacked, with the threat actor themselves getting in touch with the publication to allege that he had gained access to internal systems such as Uber’s internal email, cloud storage systems and code repositories through a simple social engineering attack. In a text message sent to an Uber employee, the hacker impersonated an IT worker and convinced them that it was necessary to share an internal password.

As a variant of phishing in which SMS is used to mine targets for sensitive information, smishing is often combined with social engineering tricks for increased effectiveness. Victims may be more easily persuaded to hand over credentials to a supposedly trustworthy source if the attacker makes the situation seem urgent or seems to be suitably authoritative, both of which may have prompted the hacker to claim to be a key IT worker. Two-factor authentication (2FA) is a recommended measure to dull the impact of smishing attacks, and prevent compromised credentials from being used by hackers effectively.

Smishing and social engineering were recently used in sophisticated attacks on Twilio and Marriott. A report from September 2021 revealed that in the first six months of the year, smishing attacks surged 700% more than in the preceding six months.

The hacker claims to be just 18 years old, with self-taught skills in cyber security, and explained that he performed the breach because Uber’s security was especially weak. On Thursday, Uber confirmed that it was subject to a cyber attack through its official Twitter channel, and also stated that it is in dialogue with law enforcement. The company has not offered an in-depth description of the attack.

As part of the breach, the hacker gained administrator control of Uber’s HackerOne account, which it uses to pay white hat hackers bug bounties. The attacker proceeded to leave comments on all active bounty tickets reading “UBER HAS BEEN HACKED (domain admin, aws admin, vsphere admin, gsuite SA) AND THIS HACKERONE ACCOUNT HAS BEEN ALSO”.

The attacker also used this access to send out an email via policy update - which sends an automatic alert to the inboxes of anyone following a particular bounty programme - including a screenshot of a Telegram exchange, providing more details on how the hacker allegedly compromised Uber's systems.

In it, the hacker (identified in the conversation as 'Tea Pot') said that after he had gained access to the intranet, he obtained PowerShell scripts that "contained the username and password for a admin user in [privileged access management tool] Thycotic", which he said allowed him to "extract secrets for all services, [including] DA, DUO, Onelogin, AWS, [and] GSuite".

The New York Times also quoted two Uber employees, who wished to remain anonymous, who said the company had put out a warning to not engage with the company’s Slack channels while the attack was active, and shortly after all employees received a message reading “I announce that I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach.”

There are concerns that younger people are increasingly turning to hacking as a hobby, driven by lack of opportunity amidst the cost of living crisis. A recent report by Censuswide, on behalf of International Cyber Expo, revealed growing concern among parents that hacking could become a pastime for young people.

“With hacking tools becoming increasingly accessible and affordable on the internet, we have witnessed a rise in ‘script kiddies’; inexperienced hackers who carry out cyber attacks,” stated Simon Newman, CEO of Cyber Resilience Centre for London and International Cyber Expo Advisory Council member.

“While ‘kiddies’ do not necessarily refer to the hacker’s age so much as their experience, many have been found to be teenagers. In fact, in the UK the average age of a referral to the National Cyber Crime Unit is just 15 years old.”

“Although law enforcement agencies are working hard to take down the websites and forums that promote hacking, the results of this survey also demonstrate a need for parents/guardians to take an active interest in what their children are doing online to prevent them from falling on the wrong side of the law.”

Uber has a history of hacking, having been very publicly compromised in a 2016 attack that resulted in the exposed information of 57 million users of its app and resulted in reputational damage for the firm. In June, a judge decided that the company’s former chief security officer (CSO) Joseph Sullivan would face wire fraud charges for his role in an attempted cover-up of the attack.

Uber declined to provide further comment to IT Pro.

A former Uber security chief must face wire fraud charges over his alleged role in trying to cover up a 2016 hack that exposed the personal information of 57 million passengers and drivers, a federal judge said yesterday.

Uber fired its chief security officer (CSO) Joseph Sullivan, currently the chief security officer of Cloudflare, in 2017 after it emerged that the company tried to hide a huge data breach. The breach took place in October 2016 and included names and email addresses of over 50 million users of the app as well as 7 million drivers, with hackers accessing around 600,000 driver’s licence numbers. The cover-up also involved payments of $100,000 in Bitcoin to the hackers.

The US Department of Justice added three charges against Sullivan in December to an earlier indictment, according to Reuters, claiming he arranged to pay two hackers in exchange for their silence while trying to hide the hack from passengers, drivers, and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In the December indictment, it alleged that Sullivan tried to suppress discovery of the breach by having two of the hackers execute a non-disclosure agreement. It falsely stated that the hackers had neither taken nor stored Uber’s data in the 2016 breach. It also said Sullivan allegedly misrepresented to Uber’s new chief executive officer, Dara Khosrowshahi, the nature and scope of the data that was compromised, falsely suggested that the incident wasn’t a data breach, and sent an email falsely claiming that the data breach wasn’t a data breach at all, but an incident that was no more severe than other security incidents.

Now, U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco rejected Sullivan’s claim that prosecutors did not adequately allege he concealed the hacking to ensure that Uber drivers wouldn’t flee and would continue paying service fees.

Orrick also rejected the former Uber security chief’s claim that the people allegedly deceived were Uber’s then-chief executive Travis Kalanick and its general counsel, not the drivers.

"Those purported misrepresentations, though not made directly to Uber drivers, were part of a larger scheme to defraud them," said Orrick, according to the indictment.

Sullivan was originally indicted in September 2020 and also faces two obstruction charges. He’s believed to be the first corporate information security officer criminally charged with concealing a hack.

Uber was fined $148 million in 2018 for failing to notify its drivers that their personal details had been hacked in 2016. The ride-hailing firm agreed on a settlement with all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Uber has been granted a 30-month licence to operate private hire vehicles in London.

The ride-hailing company confirmed in a tweet that it had secured a two-and-a-half-year licence from Transport for London (TfL), adding that TfL rightly holds its industry to the highest regulatory and safety standards and it is pleased to have met their high bar.

The company said that as it continues to serve in London, it remains focused on raising industry standards in all areas. This includes offering drivers the benefits and protections they deserve, ensuring all Londoners can get around safely and becoming a fully electric platform by 2025.

"Uber has been granted a London private hire vehicle operator’s licence for a period of two and a half years," a TfL spokesperson told IT Pro.

Uber has had to fight for a licence to operate in London over the past few years. In 2017, TfL said it wouldn’t issue Uber a private hire operator licence, stating that the company wasn’t fit and proper to hold one.

Then, in June 2018, Uber was granted a 15-month probationary licence following a two-day hearing in London. The judge said the company was considered fit and proper to hold a licence, after hearing of the sweeping operational changes it had made since TfL chose not to renew its licence the prior year.

However, in November 2019 it lost its licence to operate once again, with authorities saying it wasn’t a fit and proper operator. Authorities recognised it had made a number of positive changes and improvements but wasn’t enough to satisfy safety officials.

Finally, in September 2020, it won a licence to operate in London after plugging IT gaps. It made changes to its systems and internal processes, including the addition of software tools and more automation. This was enough to satisfy Westminster magistrates court, who ruled in favour of Uber after TfL refused to give the company a licence extension.

Uber securing a 30-month licence comes after the Supreme Court in the UK ruled that Uber drivers must be treated as workers instead of self-employed, which could lead tp minimum wage and holiday pay for thousands of Uber drivers. The Supreme Court said the ride-hailing company has to consider its drivers as workers from the time they log on to the app until they log off.

A Dutch court has ordered Uber to reinstate and compensate six former drivers that were fired based on incorrect assessments made by an algorithm.

Five of the drivers, all of which operate in the UK, were represented by the App Drivers & Couriers Union (ADCU), which argued that technology inside Uber's driver app, used to track drivers and verify their locations, had incorrectly flagged drivers for "fraudulent activity" without explanation.

The union also said that the company had failed to provide proper evidence to support its decision to fire the drivers.

The judgement was made in the absence of Uber, which had failed to contest the case originally brought in February.

On Wednesday, the district court of Amsterdam – home to Uber’s European headquarters - issued a default judgment that sided with the union. It has ordered Uber to reinstate the drivers and pay a penalty of €5,000 (£4,300) for each day they have been out of work since the case was first brought, up to a maximum of €150,000.

Uber has claimed it was only made aware of the case last week, and has therefore been unable to challenge it. It has also suggested that the ADCU had not followed "proper legal procedure".

"With no knowledge of the case, the court handed down a default judgment in our absence, which was automatic and not considered," an Uber spokesperson said.

In a separate case on Monday, a London Magistrates Court also ordered Transport for London (TfL) to reinstate the license for one of the drivers. Abdifatah Abdalla was reported to the transport regulator after he was dismissed by Uber for fraudulent activity.

Uber's driver's app uses a 'real-time ID system', software that uses facial recognition to scan drivers as they log in to the app. It also monitors the location of each driver to link them with customers.

All six of the drivers, which includes one Dutch driver, were flagged by the app's security systems for "fraudulent" activity.

In the case of Abdalla, the app reported that two separate devices had tried to access his Uber account from two different locations in London. He claims the notification of his dismissal failed to give specific reasons beyond the system flagging him for "fraudulent activity", something which he denies.

The president of the ADCU, Yassen Aslam, expressed "deep concern" about the role TfL had played in this case, suggesting the transport body had encouraged Uber to introduce "surveillance technology" as a price for keeping its operator's license.

"The result has been devastating for a TfL licensed workforce that is 94% BAME," said Aslam. "The Mayor of London must step in and guarantee the rights and freedoms of Uber drivers licensed under his administration."

The identification system was first introduced after Uber was deemed "not fit and proper" buy TfL in 2017. The transport regulator sought assurances for passenger safety and felt Uber needed to do more to verify its drivers - a number were found to have an out of date Mot, for example.

A spokesperson for TfL said that the safety of the public is its top priority and that it takes immediate licensing action when notified of driver identity fraud.

"We always require the evidence behind an operator's decision to dismiss a driver and review it along with any other relevant information as part of any decision to revoke a licence," the spokesperson said.

Uber will start offering London customers the option to select an electric vehicle option when booking a trip in a bid to make the service more environmentally friendly.

Starting today, customers will be able to access electric vehicles through the Uber Green service if a car is available, with fares matching those made in other vehicles.

The only restriction is that an electric vehicle journey must begin in ‘Zone 1’ as designated by Transport for London (TfL).

"With cities beginning to open up once again, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive a green recovery by ensuring that every car on the Uber app in London is fully electric,” said Jamie Heywood, Uber's regional general manager for Northern and Eastern Europe.

"We continue to partner with drivers to help them make the switch to electric and today we are excited to start offering riders the option to select an electric vehicle at no extra cost, allowing everyone using Uber to play their part in cleaning up urban transport."

The launch of Uber Green in London follows an expansion in green policies in recent years as the firm attempts to make its core service more environmentally friendly.

From January 2019, for example, the firm added 15p per mile to every journey in order to fund the rollout of a new fleet of electric cars. This has so far raised £125 million, which has helped expand the London fleet to 1,600 vehicles.

This still only represents around 4% of Uber’s total fleet in the capital, however, which means most users will struggle to secure an electric vehicle for their journey until more cars are added.

The company hopes to become a zero-emission platform by 2040, which would involve all its trips made with non-petrol vehicles.

Uber Green was rolled out to 15 US and Canadian cities in September 2020, but customers at the time were charged $1 more to use the service, with the fleet including hybrid vehicles. This was followed by a full rollout to 1,400 cities in January.

However, London's service has no additional cost attached, and vehicles deployed are 100% electric.

Uber will be hoping to draw a line over a tumultuous few years which saw its operating licence revoked due to shortcomings on its platform.

Following a lengthy regulatory process, however, the ride-sharing service was finally deemed "fit and proper" to hold a licence after addressing alleged breaches that put passengers at risk, as well as various holes in its IT systems.

Changes that Uber has made to its systems and internal processes, including the addition of software tools and more automation, mean the company is now “fit and proper” to hold a license to operate in London.

Following an almost year-long regulatory process, the Westminster magistrates court has ruled in favour of Uber after Transport for London (TfL) previously refused the ride-hailing platform a license extension in November 2019.

Part of the reason for the refusal was due to breaches that put passengers at risk, including a change to Uber systems that allowed unauthorised individuals to upload photographs to legitimate drivers’ accounts.

The decision comes three years after TfL first put pressure on the company to improve its systems and its practices, declaring it was “not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license” in September 2017.

The Westminster magistrates court, however, has concluded after an examination of the evidence that changes to the way Uber operates means the company is not fit to operate in the capital. Notably, Uber has “plugged” the holes in its IT systems that have led to issues over the years, as identified by a report compiled by Cognizant.

Flaws in the release management systems that oversee how Uber’s software is updated have been addressed, according to the report commissioned in April this year, and regulatory breaches are therefore less likely to happen. In particular, Uber has increased the level of automation in these processes, improved software testing, as well as increased overall governance over releases.

“Cognizant instructed by TfL had initially found that ULL’s ITSM processes were not to appropriate standard,” said deputy chief magistrate Tan Ikram. “TfL accept that there have been subsequent changes.

“Despite their historical failings, I find them, now, to be a fit and proper person to hold a London PHV operator’s licence.”

One software issue highlighted by the ruling involved the way in which seven drivers were able to continue driving after their MOTs had expired. Uber became aware of a software issue in January 2020 that was causing this error - and implemented a fix in February. The manner in which the issue was identified and patched serves as an example of an improvement in the way Uber manages its internal processes.

The regulatory battle between Uber and TfL has taken several twists and turns since 2017, with the company handed a 15-month license to operate in London in June 2018. This is after TfL ruled the ride-hailing firm shouldn’t operate due to concerns about public safety and security regarding Uber’s failure to report crimes to the police.

This license was then just extended for two months last September and was attached with conditions to ensure passenger safety. The short duration was so that TfL could closer scrutinise any additional information it was requesting ahead of future licensing decisions.

Uber’s license to operate was then once again denied in November 2019, despite the company making a host of changes to the way it operates. These changes, however, weren’t enough to convince regulators the company wouldn’t put passengers at risk.

The length of the license will be 18 months, according to various reports including that published by ITV News.

Uber has argued that it makes London a "safer place" in its appeal against Transport for London’s refusal to renew its operating licence in the city.

TfL refused to grant the ride-hailing service a new licence in November 2019 after it found that Uber demonstrated "a pattern of failures" involving passenger safety. In particular, TfL said a change to Uber's system allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other driver accounts and pick up passengers illegally in at least 14,000 trips.

Uber, which was also denied a licence by TfL in 2017 before a judge restored it on a probationary basis, this week said during its appeals process that it had improved systems to verify drivers' insurance documents and to provide real-time identification in the app.

“The energy and responsiveness which Uber... has demonstrated in seeking to meet TfL’s concerns reflect a deep-rooted commitment to safety and provide further and strong evidence of fitness and propriety,” the company said in a document submitted to court.

Uber’s representative Tim Ward QC, told the court: “It is a different business to that which existed in 2017, when TfL refused the licence extension.

“There have been far-reaching developments relevant to that question since that decision. We accept its past conduct is relevant to that question, but so is the progress it has made.”

Uber’s 45,000 drivers in London are still able to operate until the appeals process is exhausted, which could go on for several more months or even years, depending on when a decision is made and any further legal action that could follow.

Ward said that denying the company a licence would have a “profound effect” on groups at risk of street harassment, such as women and ethnic minorities, and that London is a “safer place” when Uber can operate.

Uber's battle to renew its operating licence comes just weeks after the company's former CSO was charged with obstruction of justice for attempting to cover up a data breach with a $100,000 payment to the hackers.

Uber's former chief security officer (CSO) has been charged with obstruction of justice for attempting to cover up a data breach with a $100,000 payment to the hackers.

A criminal complaint against Joseph Sullivan was filed on Thursday in a US Federal Court, according to CNBC, with the allegations relating to an incident in 2016 that saw the personal information of some 57 million Uber users and drivers stolen.

Sullivan is also charged with misprision of a felony over claims he knew about the breach and took steps to conceal it. If convicted, he could face five years in prison for the obstruction charge and three years for the misprision felony.

Both Brandon Glover and Vasile Mereacre, who pleaded guilty to the scheme last year, are still awaiting sentencing, but according to Sullivan, the pair shared the data with a third person who may still have it.

Sullivan's spokesperson, Bradford Williams, said in a statement that there was "no merit" to the charges and praised the former CSO and his team's efforts for identifying the individuals.

"From the outset, Mr. Sullivan and his team collaborated closely with legal, communications and other relevant teams at Uber, in accordance with the company's written policies," he said. "Those policies made clear that Uber's legal department - and not Mr. Sullivan or his group - was responsible for deciding whether, and to whom, the matter should be disclosed."

Sullivan is a fairly high-profile security specialist; he has previously worked for Facebook, eBay, PayPal, and also served as an assistant US attorney in a Computer Hacking and IP Unit under Barack Obama. He has also worked for the same office that has now brought charges against him.

"Being open about a cyberattack at the earliest opportunity is the most noble way of dealing with this sort of incident," said Jake Moore, cyber security specialist at ESET.

"With inevitable daily attacks on businesses of all sizes, attacks are not as damaging to a brand as they once were, due to the relentless attitude criminal hackers now demonstrate. Hopefully, this will act as a reminder to other companies not to negotiate with criminals, nor try to conceal any dealings."

Uber and Lyft have ten days to file an appeal against an injunction from a California court ruling which says the companies' drivers aren't contractors but employees.

The case centres on Assembly Bill 5, a law passed last year that requires companies to consider drivers or other gig workers as their own employees rather than contractors, which is a designation that should now only be used for tasks deemed outside the usual course of business.

For Uber and Lyft, driving is clearly a core part of their ride-share businesses, but they have long argued they offer a platform for workers to operate rather than directly employing drivers.

In May, a lawsuit was brought against Lyft and Uber for failing to reclassify their workers as required by the new regulation. The lawsuit was brought by LA, San Diego, San Francisco and state attorney general Xavier Becerra.

This latest ruling, by Judge Ethan Schulman, grants a request for an injunction against the companies, stopping them from classifying their workers as contractors. According to Reuters, the judge's decision said it was overwhelmingly likely that the plaintiffs could prove that classification was contrary to the new law, and said Uber and Luft and been "brazen" in their refusal to meet such laws.

"It's this simple: defendants' drivers do not perform work that is 'outside the usual course' of their business," the judge wrote in his ruling, referencing the requirements of the Assembly Bill 5 law.

"Defendants' insistence that their businesses are 'multi-sided platforms' rather than transportation companies is flatly inconsistent with the statutory provisions that govern their businesses as transportation network companies, which are defined as companies that 'engage in the transportation of persons by motor vehicle for compensation'."

The gig-economy giants disagree, and Lyft and Uber both plan to appeal. “Drivers do not want to be employees,” Lyft said in a statement sent to Reuters.

"The vast majority of drivers want to work independently, and we’ve already made significant changes to our app to ensure that remains the case under California law," an Uber spokesperson said. "When over three million Californians are without a job, our elected leaders should be focused on creating work, not trying to shut down an entire industry during an economic depression."

Yesterday, the company's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi called for regulation to create driver benefit funds, claiming drivers want the flexibility of contract work. "Uber would not be as widely available to riders, and drivers would lose the flexibility they have today if they became employees," he wrote in a column for The New York Times.

Alongside an appeal, Uber and Lyft will have another chance to push back against the law classifying drivers as employees, with the benefits and protections that entails. In November, Californians will vote on Proposition 22, which would label as contractors any drivers for apps such as Uber and Lyft.

“Ultimately, we believe this issue will be decided by California voters and that they will side with drivers," the Lyft spokesperson added.

Company officials at Uber told Reuters the rideshare company has launched a service to provide public health officials with access to data on drivers and riders who may have come into contact with someone infected with the coronavirus.

Uber is promoting this free service to government health officials in all the countries Uber operates in.

The newly-minted service provides health departments with data about who used Uber’s services and when, and also enables health agencies to encourage affected users to quarantine.

As part of the service, Uber will also automatically block customers with confirmed coronavirus infections from the rideshare platform for at least 14 days.

Uber is no stranger to working with US law enforcement officials in emergencies or as part of criminal investigations. When it comes to health issues, Uber’s involvement began with the 2019 measles resurgence in the US.

According to Mike Sullivan, Uber’s chief of global law enforcement, company executives met with health department and CDC officials to discuss how Uber’s data could be used to track measles cases. Discussions quickly moved to the coronavirus

“Our timing ended up being beneficial in that it allowed us to get ahead before COVID started ramping up globally,” said Sullivan.

Uber received 560 coronavirus-related requests from public health departments in 29 countries in the first half of 2020. Company officials say Uber processed most of these requests within two hours. Of those requests, 158 were filed by health authorities in 40 locations in the US.

Sullivan says Uber has seen an increase in contact-tracing requests from Australia and New Zealand, which have been applauded for their success in early coronavirus containment. Sullivan added that contact tracing in several European countries was also much more coordinated than in the US.

Uber is in discussions to acquire Postmates as part of an estimated $2.6 billion acquisition deal, according to insider sources.

Should a deal between the two companies come to fruition, it could be announced next week, if not sooner. The rumored deal marks Uber’s second attempt to acquire a food-delivery company this year.

Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, Postmates is the smallest among the major US food-delivery services. Per Pitchbook, the company has raised an estimated $906 million and was valued at $2.4 billion in 2019.

Should Uber acquire Postmates, this would effectively expand Uber’s food-delivery arm, Uber Eats. Uber Eats currently boasts the second-largest market share in the US, just behind DoorDash.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Postmates has also been in discussion with other possible buyers since as early as last year.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Postmates has been planning on launching its initial public offering (IPO) in the coming days too. Postmates had confidentially filed for an IPO in February of last year but ultimately chose to delay its efforts after the IPO market became less accepting of unprofitable startups amid WeWork’s failed IPO.

Though Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi previously stated the company would ultimately opt to exit markets where it wasn’t the dominant food-delivery service, the coronavirus has boosted demand for food delivery services.

Just a few short weeks ago, Uber was in talks to purchase GrubHub, the Chicago-based food-delivery service company. Unfortunately for Uber, Just Eat Takeaway was able to swoop in and purchase the company for a whopping $7.3 billion.

There was a time – just a few years ago – when you couldn’t move at tech get-togethers, or even speak to someone in the industry on the phone, without them mentioning Uber and Airbnb in glowing terms.

These were the disruptors. The future of tech and business. The heralds of the ‘sharing economy’.

‘Optics’ problems, to put it euphemistically, had already started to put the dampers on this kind of rhetoric in recent times, particularly with regard to Uber. But whether you thought these types of organisations were shining examples of pioneering new business models or something more sinister, it’s doubtful you would have predicted a microbe is what could have brought them low. Yet, with the collapse of the tourism and travel industries caused by the coronavirus outbreak, that’s exactly what has happened.

As my colleague Bobby Hellard wrote last week, the coronavirus pandemic has seen a massive and potentially lasting shift to remote and flexible working. For cloud and digital services providers, this has been great news, but if your business is predicated on people wanting to move around (and being able to), this is a major problem.

The figures are stark. Airbnb is set to lay off a quarter of its workforce, which is to say nothing of the impact on hosts. In an emotional letter to employees, CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged that even if the company fully recovers, “the changes it will undergo are not temporary or short lived” and that the shape of the travel industry has potentially been changed forever.

In the world of ride sharing, meanwhile, Lyft has already laid off 17% of its workforce – 982 individuals – with a further 5% being furloughed. Rival Uber has made a similar move, laying off about 14% of its workforce – 3,700 people – primarily in its customer support and recruitment divisions.

And these figures don’t even take into account all the drivers working for the businesses who often aren’t classed as employees – a longstanding point of contention between ridesharing apps and regulators that’s currently at the centre of a lawsuit in California.

While we are still waiting on Uber’s quarterly results as I write this, Lyft’s have been issued – and they don’t make for pretty reading.

“For the month of April, rideshare rides were down 75% year-over-year. Ride levels appear to have stabilised, seeming to have reached a bottom in the second week of April. We have since seen three consecutive weeks of week-on-week growth. But clearly, this is from a low absolute ride base, and rides last week were still down more than 70% year-on-year,” said CEO Logan Green on an earnings call transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

“We cannot predict the trajectory or timing of the eventual recovery, but it is clear that macro trends will continue to negatively impact our business. Even as shelter-in-place (lockdown) orders and travel restrictions are modified or lifted, we anticipate that continued social distancing, altered consumer behaviour and expected corporate cost-cutting will be significant headwinds for Lyft. The strength and duration of these headwinds cannot presently be estimated. These are the hard truths we're facing,” he added, echoing Chesky’s comments.

As I said recently on the IT Pro Podcast, the coronavirus pandemic is, in my opinion, a black swan event and as such was impossible to prepare for (although the man behind the theory disagrees). Being as we’re still in the middle of the crisis, it’s also hard to draw any lessons from the experiences of these companies that were once the pinnacle of success in the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution.

But when the dust has settled, it will be in everyone’s interest to examine why these businesses have been on such a rollercoaster ride, what, if anything, could have been done to avert it, and what other organisations can take from the experience in order to make them more resilient to whatever disasters await us in the future

Softbank has suffered major losses to its tech investment fund, due to poor performances from WeWork and Uber.

The Japanese conglomerate reported an operating loss of 225 billion yen (£1 billion) to its Vision Fund for the last quarter of 2019. A year earlier, it had generated a 176 billion yen profit in the same period. Softbank’s group profit was reported to reach 2.6 billion yen (£18 million) for the quarter versus 438 billion yen a year prior, a plunge of 99%.

The major wipeout of the Vision Fund could be partially attributed to unrealised losses in WeWork, which SoftBank bailed out in October of last year, a decision which at the time cost the Japanese company around a $1 billion (nearly £800 million). Last October, the start-up had decided to indefinitely postpone its IPO following its founder's departure from the role of CEO.

SoftBank also attributed the reason behind its major loss to its investment in Uber, which has reportedly lost 8% of its stock market value since May 2019.

Issues with both companies "have caused concern amongst potential investors in SoftBank Vision Fund 2", SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son said through an interpreter, according to CNN.

Vision Fund 1 made history when it launched in 2017, becoming the largest fund ever at $97 billion (£74 billion). At the time, Son pledged to “expand the scale”, announcing that Vision Funds 2, 3 and 4 would be “established every two to three years”. However, its huge losses pose difficult questions regarding the future of the investment fund and SoftBank’s relations with its backers, such as the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed Bin Salman. Most of the failed fund’s resources come from the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, having contributed $45 billion (£34 billion).

"At the moment, I think that our next fund size should be a little bit smaller, because we have caused concerns and anxiety to a lot of people," Son told reporters.

The Vision Fund is regulated under UK law as it is mostly operated under the London-based SoftBank Investment Advisors.

Autonomous cars have been a staple of science fiction for years, appearing in films like I, Robot, Demolition Man and Minority Report. Thanks to the brightest minds in Silicon Valley, however, they're rapidly becoming science fact.

Google is nearing the final stages of testing for its autonomous car programme, Tesla drivers can enjoy an 'Autopilot' feature for hassle-free motorway driving, and Pittsburgh residents can hail an Uber that drives itself.

But how do driverless cars work? Are they safe? When can we expect to try one out for ourselves? We answer all these questions, and more, below.

Latest news

6/11/2019: Uber car involved in fatal crash had software flaws

The self-driving Uber car that hit and killed a woman in 2018 had software issues, according to US safety officials.

49-year-old Elaine Herzberg was killed by an Uber test vehicle as she crossed a road in Tempe, Arizona in March 2018. The National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), which has been investigating the incident, released its findings on Tuesday.

According to the BBC, the NTSB found that "the system design did not include a consideration for jaywalking pedestrians".

Although the detailed findings raised a series of safety issues, a probable cause for the accident has not yet been determined. The safety board is expected to make that decision when it meets on 19 November.

Herzberg had been walking with a bicycle across a multi-lane road just before the collision. According to reports, the software on the Volvo XC90 test vehicle failed to correctly identify the bike as a collision hazard until just before impact.

The safety operator of the vehicle was found to have been watching TV rather than monitoring the car's progress, according to a police report, and could still face charges of vehicular manslaughter.

Uber, however, will not be facing criminal charges after prosecutors ruled that the company was not liable for the fatality.

Following Herzberg's death, authorities in Arizona suspended Uber from using the state's public roads for autonomous car tests. The NTSB report stated that from September 2016 to March 2018, Uber vehicles were involved in 37 crashes when in self-driving mode.

"We deeply value the thoroughness of the NTSB's investigation into the crash and look forward to reviewing their recommendations," Uber said in a statement.

03/05/2019: Government begins trials of autonomous vehicles in industry

Self-driving trucks are now being trialled by Highways England in East Anglia with a view to reducing the time it takes to complete roadworks.

Autonomous dump trucks which are used to transport large amounts of material such as dirt across worksites are now being used so they can work at all times of the day and night.

The shift to autonomous trucks could result in less time spent completing roadworks and a decreased risk of people involved in on-site accidents.

The autonomous trucks are currently being trialled on the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon after an initial trial in Australia where similar trucks are used to excavate mines.

"The trial we are leading with our partner CA Blackwell will enable the construction industry as a whole to be in a more informed position to make key decisions about autonomy on UK construction sites," said Julian Lamb, deputy project director on behalf of Highways England for the A14.

Once testing is complete, Highways England wants to roll out the latest technologies on sites across the UK, but it won't be commonplace on the nation's highways for around two-to-three years yet.

The news highlights the potential industry use cases for autonomous vehicles whereas the public is mainly used to seeing consumer examples - the technology going to offer more than a safe way to get you or your family from point A to point B.

The European Commission recently adopted a proposal to use a Wi-Fi-based standard for autonomous cars in the EU over the 5G-based C-VX2 standard that's been touted as the enabler for connected cars for years now.

The adoption has been met with fierce opposition from the likes of BMW, Ford and Deutsche Telekom which all claim that the standard will delay the rollout of connected cars in the bloc.

With that said, the two-to-three year estimate given by Highways England could be delayed further if the automotive and telecoms giants are to be believed.

6/02/2019: Gov plans to advance autonomous car trials

Autonomous cars could be on UK roads by the end of the year as the government plans to scrap requirements for the vehicles to have a dedicated safety driver.

This change means that the first advanced trials of self-driving cars on UK roads won't need a human behind the steering wheel, according to the Telegraph. The Department for Transport said the move will place Britain at the forefront of the technology.

"Thanks to the UK's world-class research base, this country is in the vanguard of the development of new transport technologies, including automation," said Jesse Norman, future of mobility Minister

"The government is supporting the safe, transparent trialling of this pioneering technology, which could transform the way we travel."

Previously, the government expected fully driverless vehicles to be in commercial operation on UK roads by 2021 with estimates that the technology will be worth 52 billion to the country in the next 15 years.

"Self-driving vehicles, made possible by advancements in AI, have been in development or testing for some time," said Matt Eckersall, regional director, EMEA West, SUSE.

"However, the news that fully driverless cars will be on the UK's roads by the end of the year, a result of removing the requirement for a dedicated safety driver, signifies not only the rapid progression being made in the space, but the increased investment by the UK government to ensure it is at the forefront of AI innovation."

However, this move may cause some concern, given the problems some autonomous car companies had last year. In May, a woman was hit by an autonomous Uber car which didn't identify her in time. The safety driver of the vehicle also didn't react in time and the woman was killed.

19/12/2018: 3,000 miles in a driverless car

A former Google engineer claims to be the first to use driverless car technology to cross America, riding coast-to-coast from San Fransico to New York in October.

Anthony Levandowski, who owns self-driving car startup Pronto AI, shared a video of his automated road trip in a product announcement.

The first car to be launched by Pronto, the Copilot, was used to make the 3,000-mile journey. Levandowski said that his team use a different approach to self-driving cars; rather than build technology that tells the vehicle how to drive, his team built technology that can learn how to drive the way people do.

"Our new approach has already enabled us to make great progress. We drove a vehicle coast-to-coast without any human intervention a technical milestone accomplished in October," he said announced.

Levandowski is a bit of an infamous figure within the driverless car space. He worked on Google's self-driving Waymo cars but left to start his own firm. He joined Uber not long after, but became embroiled in a lawsuit between the two companies after he was accused of taking trade secrets from Google.

"Over the past 18 months, as I've been painted into a villainous caricature, I've had lots of time for introspection," he said. "In some sense, the deeply personal hardships my family and I've had to endure have provided an important opportunity to step back and honestly reassess my past as well as plan for the future."

Pronto AI and the Copilot model are the initial fruits of that self-reflection, but Levandowski has used the launch to let off some frustration with the industry as a whole.

"Over the past 15 years, we've witnessed numerous advances in self-driving technology," he said. "I'm proud to have played a big role in it. At the same time, I've admittedly grown frustrated and at times impatient with the industry's inability to deliver on its promises.

"Instead of delivering products that could help people right now, we talk of "visions" or the "the future of mobility". Rather than democratizing the technological advances we've made for everyone's benefit, we reserve them for extremely narrow and non-representative "demonstrations" or "proofs of concept" that have scant hope of ever scaling in a commercially-viable way."

05/11/2018: Unpredictable London pedestrians to help test autonomous cars

The "risky" and unpredictable nature of London's pedestrians is being used to help teach autonomous cars to navigate through busy city streets.

A startup based at Imperial College London has developed software that scans and analyses footage of people walking down the most popular streets of the capital. The data is being used to help driveless cars predict human behaviour and gauge whether a pedestrian is about to dart across the road.

The company is called Humanising Autonomy and its co-founder Leslie Nootboom, believes the behaviour of Londoners is more "risky" and "confident" compare to other city inhabitants around Europe. This, he says, presents a complex challenge for autonomous cars.

"We are very confident that we are able to predict if someone is going to cross or not," he told the Evening Standard. "Cars need to understand the full breadth of human behaviour before they're ever going to be implemented into urban environments.

"The current technology is able to understand whether something is a pedestrian and not a lamp post, and where that pedestrian is moving, framing them as a box. We're looking inside that box to see what the person is doing, where they're looking, are they aware of the car, are they on the phone or running - does this mean they are distracted, or risky?"

What goes on 'in the box', where the subject is analysed, is far more complex than just whether its an obstruction or not. The machine has to assess whether the subject is going to attempt to cross the road from body language. In a busy city, where hoards of people walk up and down the streets and can cross at any given moment, that can be a bit of a minefield.

Busy street analysed by prediction model - courtesy of Humanising Autonomy

Nootboom's startup uses dashcam and roadside footage from popular streets such as Oxford Circus and Regent Street to train its machine learning model. Combining this human data with computer vision models is how the system can understand and predict complex human behaviours.

"We are working on both current vehicle safety systems (combining human decision making and computer vision models) and fully autonomous use cases. This means that our prediction systems are becoming more accurate with the day. Our vision is that cities can be safer, with automated vehicles that have a better reliability than human drivers," Nootboom told IT Pro.

22/10/2018: Addison Lee aim to ditch drivers by 2021

London cabbies might be out of a job as soon as 2021 as ride-hailing firm Addison Lee has entered a partnership to accelerate the implementation of driverless cars.

Following in the footsteps of rival firm Uber, the cab company has agreed on a deal with self-driving software maker Oxbotica to develop and deploy autonomous driving technology on the streets of London within three years.

"Urban transport will change beyond recognition in the next 10 years with the introduction of self-driving services and we intend to be at the very forefront of this change by acting now," said Andy Boland, CEO of Addison Lee Group.

The two companies will work together to create a detailed, digital maps of more than 250,000 miles of public roads in and around the capital. These maps will record the position of every kerb, road sign, landmark and traffic light in preparation for the deployment of autonomous cars.

Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said: "This represents a huge leap towards bringing autonomous vehicles into mainstream use on the streets of London and eventually in cities across the United Kingdom and beyond."

Interestingly, unlike Uber or Google, both of which plan to develop and deploy autonomous cars around the world, Addison Lee has opted for a British company to provide the AI and data mapping for London.

MPs in the UK have questioned the safety of US developed self-driving technology because the data collected and used is too contextual to the US and doesn't take into account differences in other countries.

Already in the US, a woman was killed in Tempe, Arizona after an Uber car hit and killed her. The woman crossed the road with a bike and a few shopping bags and as a result, was killed because the car's dataset didn't include that specific combination of objects.

Speaking over the weekend, MP Julian Knight, who sits on the Commons' Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said that it was an example of how Silicon Valley makes software only relevant to California. He questioned whether it could recognise more district vehicles such as a red London bus.

"This is an example here of how these new social media companies and big tech companies are so US focused," the Telegraph reported. "It means the rest of the world, which makes up 97% of the population, are not tailored to and ignored."

In a more blunt statement, the appropriately named MP Tom Brake said: "This cannot be considered a mature technology if it cannot recognise a red bus but it can spot a Chevrolet."

14/09/18: Uber driverless car development sees investment accelerate

Uber has committed to invest more than $150 million to open an engineering hub in Toronto to help accelerate and drive forward its self-driving car plans.

While Uber found itself in a difficult situation following a fatal collision between one of its driverless cars and a cyclist, the financial commitment the ride-sharing firm has made is indicative it's not turning off the highway to autonomous vehicles.

The investment, reported Reuters, will cover a five-year plan to expand Uber's engineering capabilities as well as its work on utilising artificial intelligence. And despite being based in San Francisco, Uber will carry out this engineering push in Canada with some 500 people expected to bee added to its workforce in Toronto, a city in which it chose to open a driverless cars research centre in last year.

While Uber looks to develop a driverless car fleet, Nvidia continues to push the hardware and systems needed to get such self-driving automotive technology on the road. Notably, the graphics card giant has made its Drive AGX Xavier development kit available for worldwide use, opening access to a platform that can underpin autonomous cars, trucks, shuttles and other vehicles.

Nvidia also wants to push its driverless car technology down other routes, with Project Maglev. The Project looks to push the Drive artificial intelligence-centric platform beyond self-driving cars and bring more smart automation into other industries such as robotics and healthcare, reported VentureBeat.

13/08/2018: Multiple codes open self-driving cars up for hacking

The scale of coding needed to operate self-driving cars offers an easy opportunity for hackers to potentially turn a vehicle into a "fully loaded weapon".

That's according to John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, who warned yesterday that "a car could easily be infected with viruses" allowing a criminal to hijack it, in an interview with the Telegraph.

Although mostly known for smartphones, Blackberry has recently started to develop driverless car technology, in partnership with Chinese internet company Baidu.

"I can create a car I think is 90% virus free but as soon as that car gets on the road and is being used, those conditions need to be regularly checked," he said. "Regulation and safety and security tech need to be established well before I think anyone should allow the cars on the road. The self-driving car still has a lot of human error and safety control."

Indeed, although there are no examples of the technology being involved in a crash due to software being hacked, most of the major companies have had an incident during or after testing. Recently, it was reported that Apple had a self-driving vehicle involved in an accident and both Uber and Tesla have had multiple issues in the US.

Tesla's accident proved fatal as its car hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Highlighting Chen's point, the multiple lines of code the car used detected the woman, but because she was behind a bike with shopping bags on the handlebar, the software didn't recognise her as an obstruction.

The exploitation of code to launch cyber attacks has been demonstrated in recent attacks on TicketMaster and British Airways, the latter's website only requiring 22 lines of code to be tweaked in order for criminals to access details on 380,000 of its customers.

30/08/2018: People are the cause of most driverless car accidents

Analysis suggests autonomous vehicles are to blame for just seven of the 88 crashes that have occurred in California in the last four years - with humans at fault for the rest.

Given more than 50 companies now have permits to test these cars on California's roads, there have inevitably been a number of accidents along the way; one of which was serious enough to have resulted in a death.

But analysis by news outlet Axios shows that just 8% of accidents were caused by a fault in the vehicle - with only one of these incidents occuring while the vehicle was in 'autonomous mode' and moving.

To further the case for autonomous driving, six of the seven accidents occurred while the car was both moving, and in 'conventional mode' - i.e. when a human was at the wheel. Just one of the 57 accidents involving a moving vehicle was caused by a fault in the AI.

The remaining 31 accidents, meanwhile, occurred while a self-driving car was stopped, with three of these incidents involving a human intentionally attacking a self-driving car, for example by hitting or climbing on top of it.

Axios previously examined data on self-driving cars, provided by the State of California Department of Motor Vehicles, in August 2017 where there had just been 34 recorded incidents since 2014. In the last 12 months, this figure has risen by 54.

Writer Kia Kokalitcheva said there will be a multitude of issues and accidents with self-driving cars as the AI-driven vehicles must contend with other vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and objects with which they share the road.

With the number of companies testing autonomous vehicles on the rise, and continuous investment flooding into research efforts, the number of accidents involving self-driving cars is also certain to heighten. But, at least according to this analysis, it'll be the people who are to blame.

28/08/2018: Uber teams with Toyota on driverless cars after fatal crash

Uber is partnering with Toyota to make driverless cars, with reports the Japanese car maker is investing $500 million in the ride-hailing company.

Technology from each company will be integrated into purpose-built Toyota vehicles that will be deployed on Uber's ride-sharing network. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the deal was the first of its kind to offer mobility as a service - or ride-hailing to the rest of us - using driverless cars.

Uber has come under heavy scrutiny on safety after one of its autonomous cars hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona. Khosrowshahi was keen to highlight the safety benefits of the tieup with Toyota.

"Our goal is to deploy the world's safest self-driving cars on the Uber network and this agreement is another significant step towards making that a reality," he said. "Uber's advanced technology and Toyota's commitment to safety and its renowned manufacturing prowess make this partnership a natural fit. I look forward to seeing what our teams accomplish together."

The partnership will see Uber's self-driving tech and the car maker's automated safety system used in Toyota Sienna minivans, with pilots starting in 2021. The aim is to be able to mass produce the vehicles to offer for autonomous fleets.

"Combining efforts with Uber, one of the predominant global ride-sharing and automated driving R&D companies, could further advance future mobility," said Shigeki Tomoyama, president of Toyota Connected Company.

"This agreement and investment mark an important milestone in our transformation to a mobility company as we help provide a path for safe and secure expansion of mobility services like ride-sharing that includes Toyota vehicles and technologies," he added.

16/08/2018: Uber investors suggest it ditches driverless car unit

Some of Uber's investors have suggested the taxi-hailing firm should "divest" its autonomous car unit, on which it has spent billions of dollars.

The company has been spending between $125 million and $200 million a quarter on its driverless car unit over the past 18 months, according to The Information, reportedly responsible for between 15% and 30% of the company's quarterly losses.

Uber has spent large amounts developing autonomous vehicles, which require expensive hardware and sensors that are attached to the cars but have frustrated investors with the lack of a clear path to commercialising the technology.

There is now growing pressure on CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to make Uber more profitable with the company targeting an initial public offering in the second half of the year, according to Bloomberg. And, despite investing billions of dollars into its autonomous vehicle projects, Uber has had a number of high profile issues with its testing of the technology.

In March, one of its driverless vehicles hit and killed a woman in Tempe, Florida after its software detected her but deemed her not an obstruction. The company suspended its operations nationwide and, following a long investigation from the US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), it culled it's self-driving car operation in Pittsburg, laying off 100 operatives.

Khosrowshahi has been in the Uber hot seat for over a year and has said the company has invested heavily into "big bets" such as Uber Eats, electric bikes and Uber Air, its flying car unit.

14/08/2018: FiveAI cars to gather data from South London streets

A driverless car startup has been given the go-ahead to unleash data-gathering vehicles on the streets of South London.

FiveAI, which has received the single largest investment into an AI company from the UK government, has 10 months to build a roadmap of contextual data by introducing information-gathering vehicles to the boroughs of Bromley and Croydon.

Five human-controlled cars will be operated by fully trained safety drivers and will collect data about the areas traffic rules and the behavioural patterns of pedestrians and other drivers.

"For our service to eventually operate in London, we have to learn about the road layout, topology and traffic flow," said Ben Peters, co-founder of FiveAI. "As with any vehicle on the road, safety is paramount and that's why all of our vehicles will be driven by fully-trained safety drivers.

"We believe that autonomous vehicles will be many times safer than human drivers, and this data gathering phase is a vitally important step towards making that a reality. By supporting London's transport objectives with a shared driverless car service, FiveAI can play a crucial role in reducing congestion, emissions, incidents and the cost and time of journeys to benefit all Londoners."

Urban areas such as cities have proved difficult to fully map out for many of the big operators, with high profile incidents dogging the progress of the likes of Uber and Tesla. According to a blog on FiveAI's website, written by the firm's software engineer Lars Mennen, mapping the terrain of a city is far more challenging than that of a highway or non-urban area.

"The complexity of the European urban sprawl throws plenty of spanners into the works," he wrote. "For GPS to function as it should, you'll ideally have a straight line from your GPS receiver to a satellite. Many buildings block satellite signals, and reflections from buildings interfere with signals also, making it impossible to get an accurate location."

To tackle this problem FiveAI cars are fitted with a featured call Vision which matches images collected with definitive references from map coordinates, blending the two data sets together to create a detailed roadmap.

"A car needs to be aware of pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles and many, many other stimuli," Mennen said. "By looking at what you see and comparing it to what you expect, i.e. your map data, you can successfully detect these dynamic objects."

The data gathered during the trial will be solely used by FiveAI to develop autonomous vehicle technology and will be processed and stored to fully comply with UK and EU laws.

The company is targeting 2019 to launch a supervised trial of a pilot fleet of shared autonomous vehicles on London roads and hope to demonstrate how the technology can be used to build services to reduce commuting costs, cut accident rates, limit congestion and lower emissions.

26/7/2018: Waymo-re convenient grocery shopping

Google's self-driving car division, Waymo, has launched a pilot with Walmart to ferry shoppers to and from stores to collect groceries.

The trial is currently restricted to the 400-plus members of its early rider programme in Phoenix, Arizona, and indicates how the tech giant sees its technology being used after the trial stage.

"While these are Metro Phoenix-specific partnerships today, these businesses are national and what we learn from these programs will give us a network of partners when we launch in new cities down the road," Waymo said in a blog post.

The Waymo early rider programme was launched in April 2017, and the company has spent the last year collecting people's feedback on useful ways to try its driverless cars - one of them being trips to and from the supermarket, which ranked eighth.

Other popular use cases for driverless cars in Phoenix were commuting to work, going to restaurants, dropping kids off at school and visiting bars. Trips to the supermarket came behind journeys to car repair shops, retail shopping and health and spa trips.

The partnership with Walmart will offer discounts to customers that order groceries on Walmart.com. While the order is being prepared at the store, a Waymo vehicle will collect the customer and take them to the store to collect their shopping, and then drive them home again.

Waymo has also launched a pilot to ferry passengers to the local town centre to avoid the stress of parking. Dining out came second on the list of top ten trips, with visiting bars fourth and retail shopping sixth, indicating how Waymo sees future uses of its technology.

The self-driving cars will also be used in VIP experiences for visitors to the Element Hotel in Chandler, where selected guests will have access to Waymo vehicles.

Waymo is also expanding existing partnerships with AutoNation Group, who currently helps Waymo service and maintain the vehicles in Phoenix and is now making it possible for customers to ride in a loaned Waymo while they have their personal vehicles serviced.

The focus of the pilots in Phoenix is errand running and convenience, such as being able to wine and dine without worrying about where to leave your car, or driving over the limit, and indicates how the technology might be used in a future smart city environment.

A number of autonomous vehicle companies having taken up projects in the US, while driverless car projects are underway in several UK areas too, including Greenwich and Milton Keynes.

Main image and body copy image: Waymo

24/7/2018: Stagecoach to trial UK's first driverless bus

Transport operator Stagecoach has partnered with a bus manufacturer and sensor startup to trial the UK's first autonomous bus later this year.

Due to current legislation, the self-driving bus won't pick up passengers, but will operate in the firm's depot doing parking manoeuvres, practising refuelling and entering a bus wash.

Stagecoach UK bus engineering director Sam Greer said the project could have a positive short-term effect within bus depots and prove a big disrupter to the wider public transport industry.

"This is an exciting trial that will deliver the UK's first fully autonomous single deck bus, he said. "We look forward to working with our partners on this project which we believe could, in time, help improve safety and efficiency within our depots, and over the longer term, help transform bus travel in the future."

The vehicle is currently being worked on by bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis (ADL) at its site in Guildford, where it's being fitted with Fusion Processing;s CAVstar sensor system that also appeared in the UK's largest public trial of autonomous vehicles in Greenwich earlier this year.

The CAVstar system uses multiple sensor types, such as radar, laser, camera, ultrasound and satellite navigation to detect and avoid objects and obstructions. The system is said to be efficient enough to operated day and night and in all weather conditions and can plan the optimum route.

The bus is expected to be ready for operation in Stagecoach's depots by the end of the year.

Picture: Shutterstock

12/07/2018: Uber culls self-driving car operatives in Pittsburgh

Uber has laid off 100 of its self-driving car operatives in Pittsburgh as the company revises its strategy for driverless cars in the wake of a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona last March.

The San Francisco-based company held a meeting on 11 July to inform the 100 safety drivers who ride in autonomous Uber vehicles that their positions are being terminated.

Uber had suspended its self-driving tests in North America following the fatal accident, but it had kept the drivers on the payroll. But, it seems it now is scaling down operations and replacing the positions with 55 mission specialists - more technically minded developer roles. The company said that the redundant operators could apply for new vacancies.

"Our team remains committed to building safe self-driving technology, and we look forward to returning to public roads in the coming months," an Uber spokesperson said.

Uber originally halted its self-driving test in San Francisco, Toronto and Pittsburgh after one of its cars hit and killed Elaine Herzberg as she crossed a street in Tempe, Arizona.

A US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) investigation criticised the car's software stating that it "detected but ignored" Herzberg before the crash.

Despite the damning investigation, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the firm would resume testing in the city, but stressed the company would put safety first.

Speaking at Uber's Elevate conference in May, he said: "Are we doing the right thing? Are we pushing too hard, and is it coming at the cost of safety? ...if it is then you have to take a step back. We will win because of the talent of the technical people we have in our offices."

Uber has said it remains focused on implementing the safety recommendations that came out of its internal safety review, which looked at everything from the system safety to the company's training processes for vehicle operators.

The safety aspect of driverless cars is becoming more critical in the deployment of the technology, with Uber having to cut back its operations and competitors such as Tesla also having high profile accidents with autonomous cars.

In June, the City of Boston granted nuTonomy and it's parent company Aptiv permission to operate driverless cars on public roads in Boston. It is the first and only company to operate citywide and its safety record was highlighted as the reason.

31/05/2018: MIT unveils algorithm for more 'human-like' autonomous cars

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have unveiled a new algorithm that gives "on-the-fly" analysis for autonomous cars to behave in a more human-like fashion.

The team from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) say the algorithm creates and reassesses buffer zones around a vehicle by making the best use of the limited information to then interpret different types of human behaviour behind the wheel.

"The motivation is, 'what can we do with as little information as possible?' How can we have an autonomous vehicle behave as a human driver might behave? What is the minimum amount of information the car needs to elicit that human-like behaviour?" said Alyssa Pierson, lead author of the research paper, which was presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

Sensors in autonomous cars constantly monitor and assess the surrounding area of a vehicle, called buffer zones, calculating the other cars' positions and their likely future positions. The new formula goes beyond these current pre-computed buffer zone calculations and provides a more dynamic evaluation of driving situations.

The algorithm was tested in a simulation that included up to 16 autonomous cars driving in an environment with several hundred other vehicles. Each of the 16 cars had a slightly different style of driving to mimic more human-esque behaviour behind the wheel.

"The autonomous vehicles were not in direct communication but ran the proposed algorithm in parallel without conflict or collisions. Each car used a different risk threshold that produced a different driving style, allowing us to create conservative and aggressive drivers," Pierson said.

"Using the static pre-computed buffer zones would only allow for conservative driving, whereas our dynamic algorithm allows for a broader range of driving styles."

One of the biggest challenges of autonomous vehicles is how they will integrate with human drivers and recent incidents have highlighted the need to improve the technology.

A Tesla Model S electric car that crashed into a firetruck earlier this month was reported to have sped up before the collision. A police report suggested the Tesla car was following another vehicle and dropped its speed to 55mph to match the vehicle in front. That car was said to have changed lanes and the Tesla car automatically increased its speed to 60mph without noticing the stopped cars directly ahead.

18/05/2018: Intel's Mobileye tests self-driving car tech in Jerusalem

Intel's Mobileye division has started testing self-driving cars in Jerusalem, a city supposedly know for its challenging driving conditions.

While Mobileye is based in Jerusalem, so testing in its home city is sensibly convenient, the city also throws Intel's driverless car technology into the deep end.

"Jerusalem is notorious for aggressive driving. There aren't perfectly marked roads. And there are complicated merges. People don't always use crosswalks. You can't have an autonomous car traveling at an overly cautious speed, congesting traffic or potentially causing an accident. You must drive assertively and make quick decisions like a local driver," explained Professor Amnon Shashua, chief executive at Mobileye.

This testing will put Intel's camera-only sensors setup to the test, as it tries to create a driverless car system that uses 12 cameras around a car rather than tap into Lidar and GPS systems. The idea is to create a system with "true redundancy", where each sensors system is capable of piloting a car on its own, which Intel noted is a faster wait to validate a car's self-driving perception system as well as create autonomous cars capable of still operating if one sensor system fails.

Intel's driverless car tech is also set to spread further afield as Mobileye secured a deal with a European car maker to put its self-driving technology into eight million cars, reported Reuters.

While the car maker was not named, Intel's deal will see it provide Level 3 driverless car technology, whereby a car can pilot itself autonomously but needs a human driver to be behind the wheel and paying attention to the road ahead. Mobieye already works with a swathe of car makers, including General Motors, Nissan, Audi and BMW to supply them with Level 3 autonomous driving technology.

17/05/2018: Tesla confirms Autopilot crash amid mounting safety concerns

The driver of a Tesla car that crashed into a firetruck in Utah last week had enabled its Autopilot feature, the company has confirmed.

The Model S collided with a stationary vehicle in its path on 11 May after the driver turned on both the 'autosteer' and 'cruise control' features 80 seconds prior to the accident, Tesla told police.

The driver, who suffered a broken ankle in the crash, had taken her hands off the wheel to check her phone, according to Tesla, and reported on by the Guardian, and has received a traffic citation for "failure to keep [a] proper lookout", police said.

Tesla said there were more than a dozen instances where the driver had taken her hands off the wheel for more than a minute.

It added that the driver's use of Autopilot was "contrary to proper use" because she "did not pay attention to the road at all".

Tesla's manual warns its drivers that the automatic emergency braking is not a substitute for maintaining a safe distance from cars in front of them.

"Drivers are repeatedly advised Autopilot features do not make Tesla vehicles 'autonomous' and that the driver absolutely must remain vigilant with their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and they must be prepared to take any and all action necessary to avoid hazards on the road," the company wrote.

The confirmation came out the same day that the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it was sending a team to investigate the crash.

Earlier this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter to rebuff claims from the Wall Street Journal that his company considered adding eye tracking and steering-wheel sensors to its Autopilot system but opted not to over financial reasons.

"This is false. Eyetracking rejected for being ineffective, not for cost. WSJ fails to mention that Tesla is the safest car on the road, which would make article ridiculous. Approx 4X better than avg," he tweeted.

10/04/2018: Uber to resume self-driving car tests in a few months according to CEO

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company would resume testing its self-driving cars in a few months after suspending the tests following the fatal accident in March.

Speaking from the stage of Uber's second annual Elevate conference in Los Angeles, Khosrowshahi said the tests could resume in the next few months, but would not provide any details before the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) finish its investigation into the accident.

Elaine Herzberg was killed when she was hit by one of Uber's self-driving cars in Tempe, Arizona in March. It's reported that the accident was caused by a software issue that caused the vehicle to detect but ignore her as she crossed the road.

Khosrowshahi said that the company wouldn't tweet any information before the NTSB publish its findings and said the company would not put innovation above safety.

"Are we doing the right thing, are we pushing too hard, and is it coming at the cost of safety, and if it is then you have to take a step back. We will win because of the talent of the technical people we have in our offices," he said.

Khosrowshahi briefly spoke about the company's self-driving car tests at its annual Elevate vent where it laid out detailed plans to launch a flying taxi service by 2023.

Announcing partnerships with Nasa and the US aeronautics agency, Uber hopes to fill the skies with thousands of short-range electric aircraft and mass produce them to the extent that the cost of aerial commuting would come down to the level of its land-based carpooling service.

Eric Allison recently left air taxi startup Kitty Hawk to join Uber as head of aviation programmes and spoke at the event detailing the task the company has taken on.

"To make this happen we have to do something that is basically completely unprecedented: a real-time network of aerial vehicles that all operate together at a massive scale," he said.

Khosrowshahi was interviewed at the end of the event and spoke of the need to look at urban congestion in another way and said that taking to the skies is the best way.

"We have to solve this transportation problem in more than just two dimensions, we need this third dimension," Khosrowshahi added.

08/04/2018: Uber car 'detected but ignored' woman that it hit

The Uber self-driving car involved in the test that resulted in the death of a 49-year-old woman saw but ignored her, according to a report in The Information.

Elainze Herzberg died on 18 March after the vehicle collided with her at 40mph as she pushed her bike across the road in front of the car outside of a crossing in Tempe, Arizona.

Sensors in the modified Volvo XC90 are tuned to differentiate between large, obtrusive objects, such as other cars and people, and smaller objects labelled 'false positives' that do not require the car to stop, like plastic bags.

Although it detected Herzberg, the car's software was tuned in favour of ignoring these so-called false positives and did not stop or swerve as she crossed the road, The Information reported. A human safety driver did not react in time.

Uber has already reached its preliminary conclusion and is working with the US National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), which will publish a full report later in the year.

"We're actively cooperating with the NTSB in their investigation. Out of respect for that process and the trust we have built with NTSB, we can't comment on the specifics of the incident," an Uber spokesperson told IT Pro.

"In the meantime, we have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving vehicles programme, and we have brought on former NTSB chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our overall safety culture. Our review is looking at everything from the safety of our system to our training process for the vehicle operators, and we hope to have more to say soon."

30/04/2018: Driver banned after moving to passenger seat with Tesa on Autopilot

A 39-year-old man has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving after another driver filmed him on the M1 in the passenger seat of his Tesla S 60.

The video, taken in May 2017 by a passenger in another vehicle, shows Bhavesh Patel in the passenger seat with his arms behind his head, allowing the car to run in Autopilot mode on a busy road going at around 40mph, despite the manual warning owners to be prepared to take over at all times.

The clip went viral on social media before being reported to police, who interviewed Patel, of Alfreton Road in Nottingham, at Stevenage Police Station. There he told officers his actions were "silly" but that the car had "amazing" capabilities and he was "the unlucky one who got caught".

A Tesla engineer told police that the Autopilot mode is not designed to make the car driverless, and the car's features are only meant to assist a "fully-attentive driver" with acceleration, deceleration and steering, and should not be the sole form of navigation.

Patel was handed an 18-month driving ban, 100 hours unpaid community work, ordered to undergo 10 days "rehabilitation" and must pay 1,800 in costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.

"This case should serve as an example to all drivers who have access to autopilot controls and have thought about attempting something similar," said investigating officer PC Kirk Caldicutt. "I want to stress that they are in no way a substitute for a competent motorist in the driving seat who can react appropriately to the road ahead."

This message mirrors warnings from Tesla following several deaths in automated cars in the US. Tesla has warned that the cruise control is programmed to stay within painted lane lines and doesn't recognise stationary objects. After the first death in 2016, caused by a collision with a parked truck, Tesla reduced the time limit a driver can go without touching the wheel.

Despite cases of misuse, a US Department of Transportation study in 2017 reported that Autopilot on Tesla reduces the risk of crash by 40%.

"There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide," a Tesla spokesperson said in March of this year after the second driverless car death. "If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year."

19/04/2018: California investigates workplace safety at Tesla

California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has opened an investigation into workplace safety at Tesla's Fremont factory.

The decision to investigate the electric car manufacturer comes after claims that Tesla put speed and style over workplace safety to the extent that the company's lack of coloured warning signs were down to CEO Elon Musk hating the colour yellow.

Other claims in the article, by Reveal, suggest Tesla under-reported workplace injuries.

Tesla dismissed the report in a blog posted shortly after and called the article an "ideologically motivated attack" and referred to the website as an "extremist organization".

"In our view, what they portray as investigative journalism is in fact an ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla."

But a spokeswoman for Cal/OSHA said it "takes seriously reports of workplace hazards and allegations of employers' underreporting recordable work-related injuries and illnesses".

It has been a bruising week for Musk, who had to go on a PR offensive to dispel wide reports that his company placed unreasonable demands on staff and caused production to halt due to over-automation of factory jobs.

It had been reported that a three to five day break in production was due to failing to produce enough cars per week, but a statement from a company spokesmen claimed that it was a planned pause.

"Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory," a spokesperson said.

"These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this."

However, a leaked email from Musk, listing a set of demands of his employees to "burn the midnight oil" and demonstrate the ability to produce 6,000 Model 3 cars per week by the end of June, brought more scrutiny on Tesla.

18/04/2018: Musk emails rallying call to Tesla staff

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has called on his staff to burn the midnight oil' and begin operating 24/7 at the company's Fremont assembly plant in California.

In a long and detailed email obtained by Jalopnik, Musk rallied his teams and laid out the strategy for production of the Model 3 vehicle, setting a higher bar for both his employees and parts suppliers.

On Tuesday the assembly line had been shut down, for up to five days, to begin an upgrade to the way it operates. Later that day the CEO emailed staff with exactly what that would entail.

The email is structure almost like a compliment sandwich, begin and ending with praise for his kickass team'. He starts by congratulating them for three weeks of consistently producing 2,000 cars and ends with calling their accomplishments miracles'.

The more blunt and provocative points of the message are in the middle. The Gigafactory in Nevada and the Fremont plant in California are to stop for up to five days to receive upgrades to set them up for Model 3 production targets of 3,000 per week. Fremont will begin operating 24-hours a day with 400 new jobs created for around seven weeks.

A further upgrade is planned for late May to then double production to 6,000. The high target was issued with an ultimatum: "Please note that all areas of Tesla and our suppliers will be required to demonstrate a Model 3 capacity of 6000 per week by building 850 sets of car parts in 24 hours no later than June 30th," he wrote.

"Any Tesla department or supplier that is unable to do this will need to have a very good explanation why not, along with a plan for fixing the problem and present that to me directly. We are going to find a way or make a way to get there."

Part of the reason for setting the target at 6,000 and not 5,000 is to include a margin for error, but a few paragraphs later Musk issues a warning to parts suppliers to meet his company's high standards.

"Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don't match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong," he added.

"Some parts suppliers will be unwilling or unable to achieve this level of precision. I understand that this will be considered an unreasonable request by some. That's OK, there are lots of other car companies with much lower standards. They just can't work with Tesla."

He also laid out a strategy for boosting profit by skimming away unnecessary expenditure and personally overseeing anything over $1M.

He rounded it all off with a list of productivity recommendations where he takes issue with meetings, acronyms and communication speeds and asks staff to send him a note if they feel that they have any ideas to make Tesla better.

17/04/2018: Tesla shuts down Model 3 Sedan production again

Tesla has reportedly shut down its assembly line for Model 3 cars for a second time after failing to reach manufacturing targets.

CEO Elon Musk gave CBS This Morning host Gayle King a tour of his Silicon Valley factory last week and said he was optimistic about the company's ability to speed up production of their Model 3 Sedan cars.

However, an announcement of a four-to-five day pause in production has since allegedly been issued to Tesla employees, who spoke to BuzzFeed about the issues surrounding the electric car company's production of their Model 3 vehicles.

It's the second time the line has been shut down this year, following a brief pause in production in late February.

Musk introduced the Model 3 Sedan last summer. It was billed as the company's first mid-priced, mass-produced electric car accessible to middle-class customers and not just the super wealthy.

But following issues in assembly, Musk personally took over the Model 3 production line at the beginning of April after realising it needed improving and has even said he had resorted to pulling all-nighters at the plant and, at times, even slept in his factory.

"When things get really intense, I don't have time to go home and shower and change, so I just sleep here," Musk told CBS.

Tesla's main issue has been meeting its production goals over the last six months, BuzzFeed reported. Musk had said the company would be manufacturing 2,500 cars a week by the end of the first quarter of 2018, but it was making only 2,000 per week by the start of April. Now, just two weeks later, production is once again on hold, the publication reports.

The car maker's current goal is to manufacture 5,000 cars per week by the end of the second quarter; 5,000 per week had initially been its year-end goal for 2017.

On April Fool's day, Musk posted a joke on his Twitter about the electric car company going bankrupt, following growing speculation about its future.

Tesla has struggled to reach ambitious production goals during what Musk has referred to as "production hell". He has also cited complacency with the use of technology.

"We got complacent about some of the things that we felt were our core technology....We put too much new technology into the Model 3 all at once. This should have been staged," he said.

A Tesla spokesperson issued the same statement as was given during the last shutdown, saying: "Our Model 3 production plan includes periods of planned downtime in both Fremont and Gigafactory 1. These periods are used to improve automation and systematically address bottlenecks in order to increase production rates. This is not unusual and is in fact common in production ramps like this."

09/04/2018: UK government won't create regulation for driverless cars yet

The UK government will not define how autonomous vehicles are regulated before the technology is widely available, it has confirmed.

Instead, the government plans to wait until it sees what kind of driverless technologies will come from car manufacturers, and legislate accordingly, said Parliamentary under-secretary of state for transport, Baroness Sugg.

"Whilst we do know that there will be different types of automated vehicles, with varying levels of sophistication, it is not possible at this stage to state what those changes will be. With this in mind it would not be appropriate to set definitive regulations in legislation at this time," she said in a letter addressed to the House of Lords last month.

Her memo sought to address points raised in Parliamentary debates around Automated and Electric Vehicles (AEV) Bill, including how autonomous vehicles are licensed.

Sugg said the Department for Transport is working with DVLA to ensure the vehicle licensing body's definition of different types of driverless cars works for both insurers and drivers, creating a list of the autonomous cars in the UK potentially by cross-referencing them with cars stored on the DVLA's database.

She also suggested that regulation for autonomous vehicles could be defined under the Road Traffic Act 1988, adding: "Regulating for further standards now is likely to impede innovation but, as new technologies reach the point of market readiness, we will be able to set and define the standards both internationally and domestically."

The day before Sugg's letter, roads minister Jesse Norman made a statement about a review the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission will carry out over the next three years.

The review will focus on how automated vehicles will operate with current laws and whether any new regulations are necessary. Norman also stated that the commissions have to consider how to judge criminal offences in which there is no driver and possibly no steering wheel.

03/04/2018: US watchdog blasts Tesla over Model X crash probe

A US transportation watchdog has said it's "unhappy" with Tesla's handling of an investigation into a fatal crash involving a Model X Tesla, after the company suggested publicly that the driver may have been partly to blame.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is currently investigating the crash and death of driver Walter Huang, has chastised the company for releasing the information to the public during on an ongoing investigation, according to the Washington Post.

Tesla concluded in a blog post that the autopilot technology inside the Model X electric vehicle was engaged six seconds before the vehicle collided with a concrete road divider.

Internal assessments of the car's computer logs showed that the car's autonomous cruise control system, which is designed to speed up or slow down a car, was turned on moments before the incident, according to Tesla.

However, the company added that the driver's hands were off the steering wheel during that time, despite receiving repeated warnings from the vehicle.

"In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum," said Tesla, in a blog post.

"The driver had received several visual and one audible hands-on warning earlier in the drive and the driver's hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision."

The company added that the driver had around 5 seconds and 150 metres of unobstructed view of the road before the car hit a concrete divider, however, no action was taken to avoid the obstacle.

Tesla claims that the crash was made more severe as the divider, known as a crash attenuator, had been damaged by a previously unreported incident and was unable to absorb the shock of the crash effectively.

However, reports last week suggested that Huang had complained to Tesla about the car's autopilot feature, frequently returning his Model X to the dealer after the system veered towards the same barrier that his car ultimately collided with.

Tesla has maintained that autonomous autopilot systems have helped reduce crash rates by up to 40% in the US, and that the consequences of the public not using such systems would be "extremely severe".

"There are about 1.25 million automotive deaths worldwide. If the current safety level of a Tesla vehicle were to be applied, it would mean about 900,000 lives saved per year. We expect the safety level of autonomous cars to be 10 times safer than non-autonomous cars," said Tesla.

The UK's Law Commission, responsible for regularly reviewing laws enacted in England and Wales, told IT Pro that automated technology like this is evolving quickly and must be scrutinised before they reach the UK.

"This technology doesn't easily fit within current legal frameworks and questions around safety and accidents, amongst others, have to be answered before they hit British roads," said a spokesperson for the independent body.

The Law Commission echoed a commitment made last month that it would be reviewing relevant laws with the potential of introducing reforms around the use of automated technology, which would also include self-driving cars.

27/03/2018: Uber has been ordered to suspend all tests of its self-driving cars on Arizona roads after one of its vehicles hit and killed a pedestrian last week.

A woman from Tempe was fatally injured by one of Uber's autonomous cars on 18 March while crossing a street, in what is considered to be the first time a pedestrian has been killed by the emerging technology.

Arizona governor Doug Ducey described the incident as an "unquestionable failure" to comply with the expectation that testing of the technology would prioritise public safety above all else, according to a letter addressed to Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi, seen by the New York Times.

In response to the accident, Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman told the NYT that it has "proactively suspended self-driving operations in all cities immediately following the tragic incident last week."

"We continue to help investigators in any way we can, and we'll keep a dialogue open with the governor's office to address any concerns they have."

Despite the self-imposed suspension, Arizona's governor said he has told the state's department of transportation to suspend all further Uber self-driving tests.

IT Pro has contacted Uber for comment.

Arizona has been lauded for its positive attitude towards self-driving cars and its reluctance to impose heavy-handed regulations, favouring instead the potential economic benefits that it could bring.

Arizona's Tempe Police Department said that video evidence suggested that neither the self-driving SUV, nor its onboard safety driver, noticed the pedestrian crossing the road, and that the vehicle failed to slow down before hitting the woman.

Both Google's Waymo and General Motors' Cruise will continue to test their fleets in the state, although it's unclear whether heavier restrictions will be imposed following Sunday's incident.

20/03/2018: Uber suspends self-driving tests as pedestrian dies

Uber has halted trials of its driverless vehicles across North America following a fatal collision between one of its cars and a pedestrian.

The incident happened on Sunday evening in Tempe, Arizona, according to the local police department (as reported by BBC News), when a woman, named as Elaine Herzberg, stepped out into the road in front of the specially equipped Volvo, which was in autonomous mode but also had a human behind the wheel. Herzberg wasn't using a pedestrian crossing at the time.

Tempe police chief Sylvia Moir told the San Francisco Chronicle Uber is likely not at fault, however. "The driver said it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them," she said. "His first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision."

The incident was caught on video by the car, which had at least two operational cameras at the time - one facing forward in front of the car and one facing the driver. Of the recordings, Moir said: "It's very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode [autonomous or human-driven] based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway."

"I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident," she added.

This is the second accident involving a self-driving Uber car in Tempe, with one of its vehicles being flipped on its side in a collision last year. However, this is the first reported instance of any autonomous vehicle being involved in a fatal collision.

Consumer Watchdog, a citizen safety lobby group, said on Twitter: "This is a tragedy we have been fighting years to prevent. We hope our calls for real regulation of driverless cars will be taken seriously going forward by Silicon Valley and the Trump Administration."

Tempe mayor Mark Mitchell called Uber "responsible" for pausing driverless car tests, but said he still supports the technology. "Testing must occur safely," he said in a statement. "All indications we have had in the past show that traffic laws are being obeyed by the companies testing here. Our city leadership and Tempe Police will pursue any and all answers to what happened in order to ensure safety moving forward.

"I support the step that Uber has taken to temporarily suspend testing in Tempe until this event is fully examined and understood. That is a responsible step to take at this time."

20/03/2018: Gatwick will implement Oxbotica's driverless vehicles to ferry its staff around the airport, saving money and reducing emissions.

The airport's 300 airside vehicle spend 90% of their time stationary as their drivers tend to passengers and aircraft around the airfield and in terminal buildings.

The pilot study will be the first step in a much bigger project that may mean other vehicles, such as the buses to take passengers between terminal buildings, aircraft push back tugs, passenger aircraft bridges and luggage trucks are automated in future.

It will attempt to prove driverless vehicles are safe for use on live airfields and could lead to an Uber-like car ordering and staff delivery system around worldwide airports.

"Airports offer an incredibly interesting domain for our autonomous driving software," Dr. Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica said.

"There is a huge diversity of vehicles, each with a very specific mission. The challenge of choreographing all of the activity around an individual plane, or in support of airport operations is immense and we look forward to working closely with Gatwick on this initial pilot that will demonstrate our self-driving technology carrying staff around the airfield."

Gatwick's trial will start this summer, although they won't include passengers or aircraft yet, as the airport trials the vehicles on airside roads between its North and south terminals.

The project will collect a large amount of data from a range of different vehicle types, all powered by Oxobotica's driverless car technology.

This information will be provided to the Department of Transport, Civil Aviation Authority and others transportation agencies around the world to assess whether they could be used in other markets on a commercial basis.

"If this trial proves successful then in the future we could have an Uber-like service operating across the airfield which staff can hail as and when they need to travel," said Cathal Corcoran Gatwick Airport's CIO.

"This trial is just the start and much more research will be needed, but ultimately this could be the start of widespread use of autonomous vehicles on airfields across the world. The new technology is a more efficient way to manage vehicles and could lead to a reduction in the number of vehicles required, their associated costs and harmful emissions."

06/03/2018: Stanford University researchers have come up with new technology that could enable self-driving cars to 'see' around corners and view hidden objects.

Called "Confocal non-line-of-sight imaging", the researchers described the technique in a research paper published in Nature. Scientists used lasers that bounce off walls and onto an object hidden from view, then reflect back from the object, back off the wall and onto a light-detecting sensor.

Normally such scans can take hours to develop, so the team had to come up with an extremely efficient and effective algorithm to process the final image.

"A substantial challenge in non-line-of-sight imaging is figuring out an efficient way to recover the 3D structure of the hidden object from the noisy measurements," said David Lindell, a graduate student in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-author of the paper. "I think the big impact of this method is how computationally efficient it is."

The new algorithms mean that data from the scans could be processed in less than a second and also run on a regular laptop. Now, the scientists are further developing the system to cope with many more different situations and finish the scan quicker. Work is needed to refine the system to work better when there is a lot of ambient light, though.

The researchers said that if the technology were used on a car today, it could easily detect road signs, safety vests or road markers, although it might have problems with a person wearing non-reflective clothing.

"We believe the computation algorithm is already ready for LIDAR systems," said Matthew O'Toole, a postdoctoral scholar in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and co-lead author of the paper. "The key question is if the current hardware of LIDAR systems supports this type of imaging."

01/02/2018: UK to test self-driving car on 200 miles of country roads

A self-driving car project will attempt to navigate over 200 miles of UK country roads and roundabouts in what is considered a major step towards a full rollout of autonomous vehicles by 2021.

The HumanDrive initiative, a collaborative effort between leading car manufacturers and educational groups, will run a series of initial simulations and machine learning tests in order to train the vehicle how to manoeuvre on complex roads, before a live journey in December 2019.

The project aims to take advantage of a raft of changes introduced by chancellor Philip Hammond in November's budget speech, allowing self-driving car trials to start as early as 2019.

Although a handful of live tests have been carried out on UK roads by companies such as Oxbotica, the HumanDrive project is thought to be the first to trial a self-driving car without a human onboard.

The UK hopes to have self-driving cars on roads by 2021, yet progress still lags far behind the likes of the US. However, business and energy secretary Greg Clark told the BBC that "trailblazing projects" like these "will play a vital role helping us deliver on that ambition".

"Low-carbon and self-driving vehicles are the future and they are going to drive forward a global revolution in mobility," added Clark.

The Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has pledged its support to the collaboration, alongside Leeds and Cranfield Universities, Highways England and the Transport Systems Catapult.

Initial stages of the project involve using human drivers performing intricate tasks inside a simulator at Leeds University. The data from these tests will be fed into machine learning algorithms, where it will be analysed in order to train the system to drive like a real person.

Mark Westwood, chief technology officer of the Transport Systems Catapult, said UK roads offer unique challenges for autonomous driving systems.

"They are different from American roads with roundabouts and demanding country lanes," said Westwood. "These are really testing environments. This project is about advancing the state of the art and trying to do something more demanding. The control system will learn to drive like a human."

25/01/2018: Crashes call into question autonomous vehicle safety

The safety of self-driving cars is once again up for discussion, following two crashes in California involving cars that had been put into self-drive mode.

The first accident involved a Chevrolet Bolt, which collided with a motorbike on a San Francisco highway.

According to the motorbike rider, Oscar Nilsson, the car which was in self-driving mode but also had a human driver behind the wheel started to change lanes to the left, but as he rode forward the Bolt swerved back into its original lane and knocked him to the ground.

Local paper Mercury News reports that the motorcyclist is now suing General Motors, which owns and manufactures Chevrolets and other brands, but the car maker contends Nilsson was at fault.

The other incident, which occurred earlier this week, is slightly less complex in terms of the mechanics of the incident. Rather than involving two moving vehicles, the crash in Culver City was between a stationary fire engine and a Tesla car.

According to Culver City Firefighters, the Model S ploughed straight into the back of one of their fire engines, which was attending a separate incident, at 65mph on a freeway.

The car's autopilot mode which allows for semi-autonomous driving, but also requires the driver to be attentive (e.g. holding the wheel and being prepared to intervene if necessary) was apparently engaged at the time.

There is little other information about the circumstances of the crash, currently. When approached for comment by IT Pro, Tesla didn't comment on this case in particular, but said: "Autopilot is intended for use only with a fully attentive driver."

16/01/2018: BlackBerry launches security software designed for self-driving cars

Ailing smartphone firm BlackBerry has had its sights set beyond the mobile industry for some time now since ceding the production of its devices to a third party in 2016.

Focusing instead on its expertise in security software, BlackBerry is now bringing that speciality beyond the smartphone and to driverless cars.

Named Blackberry Jarvis - possibly a nod to the AI system in the Iron Man films - the cybersecurity software aims to identify vulnerabilities in programs used in autonomous vehicles. BlackBerry is promoting it on a pay-as-you-go basis - but, according to Reuters, it could also be used within the healthcare and industrial automation industries.

BlackBerry said that once the software has been bought, car firms will have online access to the Jarvis software, which will give them the ability to scan files at every stage of their software development.

05/01/2017: Roborace and Nvidia jump on level 5 autonomy

Roborace and Nvidia have announced they're working towards introducing level 5 autonomy to Robocars via an upgrade to Nvidia's Drive Pegasus AI autonomous car platform.

The platform was first revealed in October 2017 and is capable of performing 320 trillion operations per second - the computational power equivalent to a 100-server data centre. What's more impressive is the power operates from a device the size of a single licence plate.

"Roborace will enable motorsport to play an increasingly significant role in the development of technologies which will improve driver performance and ultimately save lives on our roads," said Bryn Balcombe, chief strategy officer at Roborace.

"Cognitive power will soon rival horsepower as an automotive performance measure and the Nvidia Drive Pegasus sets a new benchmark which will enable Roborace to extend competitions well beyond the confines of traditional circuit racing."

Nvidia's Drive PX platform has already been showcased alongside Roborace's development cars when the two took part in a race around Hong Kong's Formula E street circuit last month.

"Roborace is pushing the limits of AI technology and delivering autonomous driving experiences that have never been achieved before," said Danny Shapiro, senior director of Automotive at Nvidia.

"The advances made with Nvidia technology in motorsport will accelerate adoption of autonomous vehicles on public roads, making daily travel safer and more enjoyable."

Although Robocars have been developed with racing in mind, the company hopes to apply much of the technology to street cars too.

22/12/2017: Cruise automated car crashes into a motorcyclist in San Francisco

An automated car operated by General Motors-owned Cruise hit a motorcyclist earlier this year, although it's only just been revealed to the public.

According to a filing with the Californian Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), the motorcyclist was at fault and although injured in the collision, he was only treated for murder injuries in hospital.

The report explained the Cruise car was travelling in the middle lane of a three-legged road in San Francisco's Lower Haight area. It began moving into a space in the left lane, but as the traffic ahead slowed, it raliser the gap was too small and so returned to the centre lane.

However, in that time, a motorcycle was travelling between the right and centre lanes. It began moving towards the centre lane, hit the autonomous car and fell of his bike.

"We test our self-driving cars in challenging and unpredictable environments precisely because, by doing so, we will get better, safer AV technology on the roads sooner," Cruise said in a statement. "In this case, the motorcyclist merged into our lane before it was safe to do so."

The car's speed was logged at 12mph, while the motorcyclist was travelling at 17mph.

California's DMV posts all automated car incidents, including collisions, on its website. This year alone, Cruise has been involved in 14 accidents around San Francisco, including one incident when another vehicle hit the back of a Cruise car.

Although 14 incidents does seem a lot compared to the average non-automated car, this isn't directly comparable to other automated car manufacturers because Cruise's biggest competitors - Uber and Waymo - test their cars in Phoenix and Arizona doesn't post its data publicly.

17/11/2017: Jaguar Land Rover's first autonomous vehicle hits the streets

Jaguar Land Rover tested its first driverless vehicle on British streets it announced today.

The tests are taking place in Coventry, where the company is headquartered. They are part of the 20m UK Autodrive project which is a government-backed competiton to trial autonomous vehicle technology.

The company is using a Range Rover Sport which can operate autonomously through a city and is a step closer to level 4 autonomy, one of the highest grades of self-driving a car can reach. It wants to make the autonomous vehicle work in on and off-road driving environments and all kinds of weather.

"Testing this self-driving project on public roads is so exciting, as the complexity of the environment allows us to find robust ways to increase road safety in the future. By using inputs from multiple sensors, and finding intelligent ways to process this data, we are gaining accurate technical insight to pioneer the automotive application of these technologies," said Nick Rogers, executive director of product engineering at Jaguar Land Rover.

In June, Tony Harper, director of engineering research at the company said: "The automotive landscape is changing faster today than ever before. As a technology company, our innovation is continuous and our cars of the future will become more capable, cleaner, more connected, more desirable and smarter. Our Autonomous Urban Drive research is Jaguar Land Rover's next step in our development of both fully and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies."

With the launch of the trials, Coventry joins 12 other cities which are carrying out self-driving vehicle tests on public roads globally.

In Arizona, Google's Waymo has already launched driverless Chrysler Pacifica minivans. The driverless vehicles previously had human drivers and offered free rides to residents; now there will be no driver. However, one of Waymo's staff will be present in the vehicle until the novelty wears off.

Image Source: Jaguar Land Rover

09/11/2017: Autonomous shuttle involved in accident on its first day

A self-driving shuttle was involved in a crash on it's launch day in Las Vegas yesterday.

The shuttle, launched by the American Automobile Association (AAA) in partnership with Keolis and manufactured by NAVYA, had begun its first day of a 12-month pilot scheme

The City of Las Vegas stated that the shuttle was "grazed" by a delivery truck in downtown Las Vegas.

"The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it's sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident.

"Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle. Had the truck had the same sensing equipment that the shuttle has the accident would have been avoided," the City wrote.

It added that the shuttle will continue with its 12-month pilot scheme but remained out of service for the rest of the day yesterday.

The driver of the truck was issued a ticket by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.

Mike Blasky, PR at AAA, wrote on Twitter: "Truck making delivery backed into shuttle, which was stopped. Human error causes most traffic collisions and this was no different. Driver of truck was cited. No one hurt except a bruised bumper!"

The shuttle aims to provide a quarter of a million visitors and residents of Las Vegas with the chance to ride a self driving vehicle. The pilot also wants to survey riders to see if they are wary of driverless technology and whether taking part in the scheme changes their mind. The AAA wants to explore how other people on the street react to the autonomous vehicle too.

The shuttle has LiDAR technology, GPS, cameras and can seat up to 8 passengers with seatbelts. It covers a 0.6 mile loop in the Fremont East district and can be boarded at any of its three stops.

Image source: NAVYA

08/11/2017: Waymo launches fully-autonomous cars

The race to deploy truly driverless cars has hotted up, with Waymo announcing that its fleet of autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona will now operate with no 'safety driver'.

Waymo, the self-driving car arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, has had a number of Chrysler Pacifica minivans operating in the Phoenix area since April 2017, offering free rides to residents. Until now, however, they have had a human driver behind the wheel who can take action in case of emergency a stipulation in most locations where autonomous vehicles are being tested on public roads.

At Web Summit in Lisbon, however, John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, revealed that these vehicles will now start operating without a driver.

"What you're seeing now marks the start of a new phase for Waymo and the history of this technology, Krafcik said, according to USA Today.

"Our ultimate goal is to bring our fully self-driving technology to more cities in the US and around the world," he added.

Waymo's testing had largely taken place in California until recently, but it ran into several regulatory barriers and subsequently moved to Arizona, where there's no need for a special permit in order to operate an autonomous vehicle on public roads.

The state offers other benefits too, notably its steady, warm climate; it's easier for driverless cars to operate in reliably dry conditions than in rain, snow, high winds and so on. It also doesn't have the high variability of daylight hours that states and, indeed, countries further north do.

Arizonan passengers who successfully applied to a programme to use one of Waymo's fully-autonomous vehicles won't be totally alone at first, with a member of Waymo's staff present in the vehicle until the novelty wears off. After that time, however, there will be no human intermediary between the car and those who choose to be taken for a spin.

08/09/2017: Former Android developer Cyanogen leaps into driverless cars

Remember Cyanogen, the open-source Android developer? After renaming itself Cyngn though it's presumably pronounced the same way the company looks set to pivot into driverless car development.

Cyngn has received a permit to test driverless cars in California, according to a report by Axios, and job listings suggest its on the lookout for staff to develop hardware and software for autonomous cars. The report claims it's hired dozens of employees with such skills recently.

The company imploded last year following layoffs and the departure of CEO Kirt McMaster, who was replaced by former COO Lior Tal. It then stopped updating its CyanogenMod version of Android, which let users fiddle with settings and personalise the mobile operating system, offering an alternative to running the wholly Google linked OS.

An alternative version of autonomous car software could be seen as a useful counter to the driverless systems under development by Silicon Valley giants, but there's plenty of rivals for Cyngn to have to see off for its as yet unannounced version to win the business of car makers.

08/09/2017: UK launches new autonomous vehicle initiative

The government has announced the launch of its MERIDIAN programme, which will help those developing driverless vehicles co-ordinate their testing and is a place to store information regarding all autonomous vehicle testing in the UK.

Part of the initiative will involve developing a "cluster of excellence" along the M40 corridor, where the majority of driverless car testing will occur. The government hopes that by building a hotspot for autonomous vehicle testing, it will attract investment from businesses both at home and abroad, helping to build the UK's reputation as a leader in connected car testing.

"At the heart of our Industrial Strategy is a commitment to delivering world class science, research and innovation," climate change and industry minister Claire Perry said. "The MERIDIAN co-ordination hub embodies this ambition, creating a globally recognisable brand that will bring the automotive sector, academia and Government together behind a common set of strategic goals."

The project has been part-funded by the government's 100 million CAV investment programme and the rest of the funding has been provided by the tech industry, which recognises the importance of building a hub to continue the effective development of autonomous vehicle testing.

"These technologies are coming and will profoundly change our understanding of mobility," Ford director of global vehicle evaluation and verification and chair of the Auto Council Technology Group, Graham Hoare said. "The UK has long-standing capabilities across many of the sectors supporting new vehicle technologies and an approach that is more open and collaborative than other markets."

How do self-driving cars work?

Self-driving cars use a battery of sensors to detect their surroundings, including radar, lasers and camera arrays. The vehicle's onboard computer then uses specialised software to react to this input in real-time, adjusting the car's steering and acceleration to suit the situation.

While some vehicles, such as the Google prototypes which have popularised the idea, are totally autonomous, other cars only automate certain aspects of driving. Tesla's Autopilot feature, for example, features adaptive cruise control, which maintains a safe speed and distance from other vehicles when driving on the motorway.

It also features basic automated steering to ensure you don't accidentally drift into the wrong lane, and although it can perform basic steering maneuvers automatically, it is not intended to replace a human driver altogether.

Are self-driving cars safe?

There is still much debate over whether or not fully autonomous cars should be made widely available. Some say that their safety record is impeccable, while others argue that automobiles are simply too dangerous to be operated by an algorithm.

This debate has been reignited by a number of high-profile Tesla crashes, one of which has been blamed on an Autopilot malfunction. The incidents have raised questions over whether or not self-driving technology is ready for implementation.

On the other hand, Google has emphasised how safe its fleet of self-driving cars are. As part of the testing programme for its autonomous vehicles, the company has posted regular safety logs detailing any crashes the vehicles are involved in, with the vast majority being caused by human drivers in other cars.

Experts remain divided, however, and if self-driving cars are ever likely to be widely commercially available, they will doubtless be heavily regulated, monitored and tested.

When will self-driving cars hit the road?

In many cases, they already have. Some high-end luxury vehicles already feature 'assisted driving' elements that are close to fully autonomous driving, with Tesla being the obvious example.

Elsewhere, testing of various driverless car projects is underway in the US, with California, Texas, Seattle and more all hosting autonomous vehicle test runs. The UK government has also given the green light for similar trials in Britain, so UK commuters may soon be sharing the roads with autonomous shuttles.

As for when driverless cars will become commercially available, however, that is yet to be seen. As the technology is young and comparatively untested, it is likely that substantial tests will have to be conducted in partnership with government and regulatory bodies before the vehicles are available for public purchase.

There is also a question as to whether or not the average driver will be able to purchase one at all. Even if fully autonomous cars are allowed to be sold, the price of each vehicle is likely to be prohibitively expensive due to the large amount of sophisticated technology that goes into them.

As such, it's likely to be at least a few years before autonomous cars are approved for general road use, and most likely another few years after that before they become a commonplace sight.

Are driverless cars legal?

As no fully autonomous cars have yet made it to the mass-production phase, no legislation currently exists to govern their public use. However, transport authorities both in the UK and in the US are currently in the process of drawing up new laws or amending old ones to account for driverless vehicles.

In the UK, for example, companies need no permits or authorisation to test autonomous vehicles on public roads. "Real-world testing of automated technologies is possible in the UK today," the government's Pathway to Driverless Cars report reads, "providing a test driver is present and takes responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle; and that the vehicle can be used compatibly with road traffic law."

The UK also plans to amend the Highway Code to allow vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems to change lanes on the motorway and be parked via remote control. Changes to car insurance would extend it to cover product liabilities for automated vehicles. Insurers would pay out to victims, then reclaim the money from the manufacturers.

The US has also granted testing permits for driverless cars in four states, as well as publishing a 15-point safety checklist for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles in order to better regulate the emerging industry.

Published by the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency, the Federal Automated Vehicles Policy also marks the agency's move to the SAE scale, which measures a vehicle's level of autonomy. The scale runs from zero, where the driver has total control of the vehicles, all the way to five - a totally autonomous car requiring no human input.

Vehicles that measure two or three on the SAE scale - such as the Tesla and other semi-autonomous vehicles - are already road-legal both here and in the US, as the human driver is considered to be in control for the majority of the time.

While many countries have committed to fostering a supportive environment for the development of autonomous cars, concrete legislation governing their use is still likely to be some years away, as the technology itself has not yet been fully finished.

Who manufactures self-driving cars?

The most well-known companies exploring self-driving cars are Google and Tesla, but there are very few companies connected to the automotive industry that aren't exploring the technology.

Ride-hailing company Uber, for example, is currently testing its own fleet of autonomous taxis in Pittsburgh. Apple has also long been rumoured to be exploring the self-driving car field in some form, and has been linked to multiple different auto manufacturers, including McLaren.

In addition to tech companies, however, regular car makers are also getting in on the act. Audi, Ford, BWM, Honda, Daimler, Volvo and more have all been dabbling in some form of autonomous driving project. Luxury passenger vehicles have also been experimenting with using the tech in industrial vehicles such as heavy goods lorries.

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06/09/2017: FiveAI raises 26.8 million in funding to develop autonomous vehicles

British driverless car startup FiveAI has raised 26.8 million in funding, which it will use to develop its own self-driving cars - to be trialled in 2019.

The money was raised through a 14 million Series A financing round led by Lakestar Capital and the startup's existing investors, such as Amadeus Capital Partners. The rest of the money came from a 12.8 million grant from the UK government given to the StreetWise consortium, led by FiveAI.

FiveAI will use the funding to develop autonomous SAE level 4 self-driving technology, vehicles which are classified as having a high level of automation, as outlined on SAE's scale. It wants to provide a personal mobility service for individuals currently driving some or all of their daily commute.

The Streetwise consortium aims to deliver a safe driverless car service in London towards the end of 2019. The consortium is composed of companies such as the Direct Line Group and McLaren Applied Technologies. It aims to show how autonomous vehicles can reduce commuting costs, recover commuting time, cut accident rates, reduce congestion and lower emissions. The project is also partnering with Transport for London to tailor the service to public transportation needs.

FiveAI co-founder and CEO Stan Bolan said: "Cycling, walking, buses and trains offer a great service for most commuters, but some journeys are still being served by personal or individual transport. Initially we'll target these journeys with our shared mobility solution which will also pave the way for potential large-scale autonomous public transport in the future.

"In the short term, from day one of service launch the StreetWise project will increase public transport usage, reduce congestion and emissions, and make our urban areas more liveable for all."

Greg Clark, business and energy secretary, said: "Low carbon and self-driving vehicles are the future and the UK has a great opportunity to lead this technology revolution. The government is determined to ensure the UK becomes the go-to place for the development of the next generation of vehicles as part of our Industrial Strategy.

The Department for Transport revealed in August that it had set up a 8.1 million fund to go towards trialling driverless lorries on UK roads. The tests will involve linking up three HGVs through wireless technology and turn them into a convoy. The braking and acceleration will be controlled by the lead vehicle and researchers hope to understand how autonomous lorries can be better controlled.

01/09/2017: Samsung gets permit to test self-driving systems on Californian highways

Samsung has entered the self-driving car race, securing a permit to test autonomous vehicles on Californian roads.

The South Korean firm received the permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which has been revealed in an update of the department's list of companies approved for testing autonomous vehicles in the state.

There's currently very little information on what Samsung has planned for its work on driverless cars, for example whether it will make its own autonomous vehicles or provide technology to support the development and running of self-driving cars from other manufacturers. Nor is there any information on whether Samsung plans to create driverless car technology for consumer or commercial use.

Samsung has already created some test hardware with fellow South Korean firm Hyundai, however, adding AI modules and sensors to some of its cars, so there's a strong chance the tech firm could be planning to create an autonomous car platform which could be integrated into existing vehicles.

If Samsung does indeed start testing on Californian highways, there's a good chance its cars could metaphorically rub shoulders with other self-driving cars from the likes of Google, Nvidia and other companies testing autonomous driving systems.

29/08/2017: Domino's teams with Ford for driverless pizza delivery

Order a pizza from Domino's in Michigan and it could come via a driverless car - and you'll have to walk out of your house to the street to get your dinner.

The pizza maker and Ford have teamed up "to understand the role that self-driving vehicles can play in pizza delivery."

As part of that, for the next several weeks, customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan could get their pepperoni pizza order delivered via a Ford Fusion Hybrid Autonomous Research Vehicle, but only if those customers agree to take part.

Customers that do will be able to track their dinner via GPS and receive text messages when the Ford approaches necessary as they'll have to go out to the car to fetch their pizza, a potential downside to driverless car deliveries, though the research vehicles will have a human at the wheel in case of problems.

"We're interested to learn what people think about this type of delivery," said Russell Weiner, president of Domino's USA. "The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience. For instance, how will customers react to coming outside to get their food? We need to make sure the interface is clear and simple. We need to understand if a customer's experience is different if the car is parked in the driveway versus next to the curb. All of our testing research is focused on our goal to someday make deliveries with self-driving vehicles as seamless and customer-friendly as possible."

Ford has long been working on self-driving cars, promising a fully autonomous model by 2021, and this isn't Dominos first foray into human-free delivery techniques, either. It's built its own food delivery robot and also teamed up with Starship Technologies for its delivery drones on wheels only two years after a 2015 prank for April Fool's that it was rolling out driverless delivery vehicles called "Domi-no-driver".

24/08/2017: Semi-autonomous lorries coming to UK motorways

The Department for Transport (DfT) has revealed an 8.1 million fund to improve the functionality of driverless lorries through trials on the UK's roads.

The trials will involve hooking three HGVs (heavy goods vehicles) up together with wireless technology, travelling as a convoy. All braking and acceleration will be controlled by the lead vehicle in the hope it will help researchers understand how autonomous lorries can be better controlled. A human driver will be onboard to take over the controls at any time.

"We are investing in technology that will improve people's lives," Transport Minister Paul Maynard said. "Advances such as lorry platooning could benefit businesses through cheaper fuel bills and other road users thanks to lower emissions and less congestion.

"But first we must make sure the technology is safe and works well on our roads, and that's why we are investing in these trials."

The trials will be run by Transport Research Laboratory, following a successful feasibility study that recommended a more in depth study was conducted to see whether it would be possible for platooning technology to be used in the future.

The three-stage trials on the UK's roads will begin in 2018. The first stage will concentrate on whether it would be possible for platooning to happen on a commercial basis on the UK's roads in the future.

"The trial has the potential to demonstrate how greater automation of vehicles, in this instance, HGVs, can deliver improvements in safety, better journeys for road users and reduction in vehicle emissions," said Jim O'Sullivan, Highways England Chief Executive.

"Investing in this research shows we care about those using our roads, the economy and the environment, and safety will be integral as we take forward this work with TRL."

23/08/2017: Apple changes up its plans for a self-driving car

Apple is developing a self-driving shuttle bus to take Apple employees from one building to another on its new Cupertino campus, it is reported.

The shuttle is likely to be a commercial vehicle which Apple will utilise to test its self-driving car technology, according to The New York Times, which spoke to five anonymous sources. The test vehicle project is called PAIL, which stands for Palo Alto to Infinite Loop, which are the addresses of its main office in Cupertino, close to Palo Alto in California.

Apple's Titan project began in 2014 and the company took on employees who knew how to build cars, as well as long-standing Apple employees, the sources told the publication. These employees looked to redesign a whole car, creating everything from motorised doors to ensuring the car could do without a steering wheel or pedals.

Apple also worked on inventing new lidar technology as well as potentially using spherical wheels on the car, instead of round ones, potentially giving the car better movement.

Despite this, the project faced problems, as there wasn't a clear vision of what Apple wanted in a vehicle, the NYT said. Team members complained of "shifting priorities and arbitrary or unrealistic deadlines".

There was also a disagreement between Apple executive Steve Zadesky and Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive. Zadesky wanted to design a semi-autonomous car, whereas Ive wanted to make it fully autonomous. There was even disagreement within the team on whether the car's OS, called CarOS, should be programmed with Swift, Apple's programming language, or C++.

Apple shifted the direction of its Titan project last year, the NYT said, and appointed another executive, Bob Mansfield, to oversee it. Mansfield decided to throw out the plans for developing a car and instead moved the focus of the project to self-driving technology.

He also laid off some hardware staff and decided to recruit people with knowledge in autonomous systems, instead of car production.

CEO Tim Cook said in June that Apple was building driverless technology, something which he viewed as very important. He then hinted that the autonomous tech is not limited to vehicle software, and is possible that it could expand into various different areas.

17/08/2017: Fiat Chrysler joins Intel and BMW in self-driving vehicle quest

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has joined Intel, BMW Group and Mobileye to develop a platform for self-driving cars.

The project has the ambitious aim of "developing a world-leading, state-of-the-art autonomous driving platform for global deployment".

Intel, which last week completed its acquisition of sensor-creator Mobileye, announced the memorandom of understanding between the companies, which they say will use each company's individual strengths and resources to achieve their goal. This will include bringing together engineers in Germany, and other unspecified locations, as well as using Fiat Chrysler's long-standing knowledge of the North American automotive industry.

Sergio Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler, said: "In order to advance autonomous driving technology, it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers.

"Joining this cooperation will enable [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles] to directly benefit from the synergies and economies of scale that are possible when companies come together with a common vision and objective."

Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, added: "The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customise.

"We're thrilled to welcome [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles'] contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world's safest autonomous vehicles."

09/08/2017: The next public trial of government and industry-backed driverless pods is set to start in autumn and take place in the Greenwich Peninsula.

The Gateway project's autonomous pods are set to provide first and last mile transportation by connecting transport hubs with a number of different business, leisure and residential locations, as reported by Fleet News.

Fusion Processing, a company which specialises in creating radar and sensor technology, will provide the sensing and control equipment in the new pods. The pods themselves will be built by Westfield Sportscars, a car manufacturer that builds two-seater sports cars.

The vehicles will be based on the Heathrow Airport pod design but will be updated to be used in this new environment, according to the publication, and will be based at the UK Smart Mobility Living Lab in Greenwich.

Simon Tong, principal research scientist at TRL, told Fleet News: "With Fusion joining the team, Gateway is in a unique position to let the public interact with three very different autonomous control systems during our urban trials. Each of our autonomy providers - Fusion Processing, Oxbotica and Gobotix - are great British success stories, and together with Westfield, they represent the diversity of driverless expertise in the UK."

He added: "With Fusion, we look to build on all we have learned for our fleet of new driverless pods so that Gateway can conclude with a trial that will engage as many people as possible and hopefully amaze them at the same time."

The Gateway project has conducted a number of automated vehicle tests, including a project which tested last-mile automated deliveries. Later in 2017 it hopes to test autonomous valet parking.

The project provided autonomous pods in April so that members of the public could try riding in the first prototype, which were developed by Oxbotica. These were based around Greenwich too, carrying four passengers at a time through routes near the O2 arena and Greenwich.

Dr Graeme Smith, CEO of Oxbotica, said it was an amazing opportunity to take part in the Gateway Project. He said: "We wish Westfield and Fusion well as they take their product closer to a production phase."

Tong finished: "This is a really exciting time for the project. We're very grateful to Oxbotica for all they have contributed in helping us learn more about the complexities of operating a driverless pod in an urban environment.

07/08/2017: Government draws up cyber security proposals

The UK government published tougher cyber security guidance for car manufacturers yesterday to ensure internet-connected vehicles will be better protected from hackers.

The proposals state that manufacturers should create and adhere to a security programme tied to their "broader mission and objectives", with the Department for Transport (DfT) worried that the cars will be targeted by hackers to access personal data, steal cars that use keyless entry, or even try to take over control of the cars.

Eight basic principles will form the basis of new legislation to be put before Parliament, the DfT said. Firstly organisational security must be a board-level priority, with the boardroom taking responsibility for it. Engineers must also be aware of current threats and work with third-parties to mitigate them as they build smart vehicles, the proposals state.

Manufacturers must also offer product aftercare and incident response to ensure systems are secure over their lifetime, not just upon their release, as well as designing the systems using a defence-in-depth approach, which means that cloud servers to which any vehicle data is sent are independently protected, as well as there are no single points of failure.

Firms must also work with their sub-contractors, suppliers and wider supply chain to co-ordinate on security, to agree standards and data requirements so that their security systems work together. Lastly, the systems themselves should be made resilient to cyber attacks like sensor jamming, and are fail-safe in the event of a successful hack.

Transport minister Lord Callanan said: "Our cars are becoming smarter and self-driving technology will revolutionise the way in which we travel. Risks of people hacking into the technology might be low, but we must make sure the public is protected."

He added: "Whether we're turning vehicles into wifi connected hotspots or equipping them with millions of lines of code to become fully automated, it is important that they are protected against cyber attacks."

Mike Hawes, the CEO of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, welcomed the measures, saying it's vital to champion cyber security and share best practice. He added: "These vehicles will transform our roads and society, dramatically reducing accidents and saving thousands of lives."

Driverless car technology has been the focus of many companies and there is plenty of competition, from Uber to Baidu.

The government is also looking at creating a new framework to insure self-driving cars, announced in this year's Queen's speech under the Autonomous and Electric Vehicles Bill.

02/08/2017: Tim Cook says Apple AI is applicable to more than just cars

Apple's research into autonomous car technology might be applicable to sectors other than the automotive industry, according to CEO Tim Cook.

The tech giant finally acknowledged the truth in rumours that it was building driverless technology in June, when Cook told Bloomberg that it was "a core technology that we view as very important".

But he declined to give a steer on how the tech would manifest itself in Apple products. Yesterday he painted a clearer picture of its potential on a conference call following the company's quarterly results.

"Autonomy is the mother of all AI projects," he said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha. "And the autonomous systems can be used in a variety of ways and a vehicle is only one. But there are many different areas of it and I don't want to go any further with that."

While Cook is keeping quiet on Apple's plans for autonomous tech, it's clear that it is not limited to vehicle software. If it's the "mother of all AI", it's possible that its applications could expand into various different areas.

Apple already has a smart voice assistant in Siri, and its rivals haven't been slow to deploy AI in chatbots, home speakers, and much more. Ocado is using artificial intelligence to automate warehouses, for instance, while CIOs believe AI could help them automate plenty of routine business functions.

28/06/2017: Self-driving cars are failing to cope with the sight of a kangaroo in front of them.

According to a report by ABC News in Australia, the means by which the marsupials move bamboozles autonomous cars.

This was noticed by Volvo Australia's technical manager David Pickett, who said that when a kangaroo is in mid-flight it looks further away, and then when it lands it looks closer. As self-driving cars use the ground as a reference point, a bounding kangaroo confuses the car and thus cannot determine its distance.

But Pickett told ABC News that it gets even more complicated; the car needs to identify a kangaroo.

"We identify what a human looks like by how a human walks, because it's not only the one type of human you've got short people, tall people, people wearing coats. The same applies to a roo," he told reporters.

While Volvo has tested its large animal detection software in moose in Sweden, solving the kangaroo problem is no nearer to a solution. The country's National Roads and Motorists' Association said that 80% of animal collisions in the country involve kangaroos.

While this wouldn't delay the rollout of driverless cars in Australia, the problem still needed to be sorted out before introduction.

Kangaroos aren't the only issue for self-driving cars in the Lucky Country. The continent also features unsealed roads, unmarked highways and massive road trains. But generally, the feeling is that although while road infrastructure and technical issues need sorting out, Australia will still be on course to have cars on the road before many other places.

"The maturity is much further along than maybe is publicly aware," said Australian Driverless Vehicle Initiative executive director Rita Excell.

27/06/2017: Nvidia signs AI deal

Nvidia has announced partnerships with several car makers and automotive suppliers to boost artificial intelligence in driverless cars.

Volkswagen will cooperate with Nvidia to expand its research on deep learning. At the carmaker's Data Lab, researchers are working with Nvidia on developing new procedures for optimising traffic flow in cities.

The firms have established a startup support programme at Volkswagen's Data Lab to provide technical and financial support for international startups developing machine learning and deep learning applications for the automotive industry. The pair will accept five startups to the support programme from this autumn.

There will also be a "Summer of Code" camp where high-performing students with qualifications in IT, mathematics or physics will have an opportunity to develop deep learning methods in teams and to implement them in a robotics environment.

Nvidia will also work with Volvo and Autoliv to develop advanced systems and software for AI self-driving cars. The three companies will work together along with Zenuity, a newly formed automotive software development joint venture equally owned by Volvo Cars and Autoliv, to develop next-generation self-driving car technologies.

Production vehicles built on the Nvidia Drive PX car computing platform are planned for sale by 2021.

Volvo Cars, Autoliv and Zenuity will use Nvidia's AI car computing platform as the foundation for their own advanced software development. The platform uses cameras and GPS to plan a safe route and adjust to changing circumstances.

Zenuity will also provide Volvo with self-driving software. Autoliv will sell this software to third-party OEMs using its established and broad sales, marketing and distribution network.

Nvidia has partnered with automotive supplier ZF and camera perception software supplier Hella to deploy AI technology on the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) safety certification for the mass deployment of self-driving vehicles.

ZF and Hella will provide customers with a self-driving system that integrates front camera units, as well as supporting software functions and radar systems.

The firms will use Nvidia's Drive AI platform to develop software for scalable modern driver assistance systems that connect their advanced imaging and radar sensor technologies to autonomous driving functionality.

13/06/2017: Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that Apple is developing self-driving technology.

In a Bloomberg interview, he said: "We're focusing on autonomous systems ... It's a core technology that we view as very important."

Cook explained: "We sort of see it as the mother of all AI projects, it's probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on. And so autonomy is something that is incredibly exciting for us. But we'll see where it takes us, we are not really saying from a product point of view what will we do, but we are being straightforward that it's a core technology that we view as very important."

This new industry is seen to be as very appealing, especially as it was predicted that it will be worth $7 billion by 2050 and $800 billion by 2035. A total 43% of total revenues are expected to come from business use of self-driving cars such as in transportation, freight delivery and sales and service fleets. Yesterday, Jaguar announced that it was investing 20 million in Lyft, Uber's arch-rival, in order to help its research on self-driving cars

There have been plenty of rumours that Apple was developing a car under the codename Project Titan. In December it was reported that Apple had plans to develop a self-driving car because of a letter the company wrote to US transport regulators. However, in April last year, the Ford CEO also claimed that Apple was building a car although there was no clear evidence available.

12/06/2017: A new study by Intel predicts steep exponential growth in the self-driving car industry, which is expected to reach $800 billion in market value by 2035 and a massive $7 trillion by 2050.

The industry's predicted mid-century market cap is more than the projected 2017 GDPs of Japan and Brazil combined, Intel's report, Accelerating the Future: The Economic Impact of the Emerging Passenger Economy, found.

Business use of self-driving cars, such as in industries like transportation, freight delivery and sales and service fleets, will account for 43% of total revenues, generating $3 trillion in revenues, the chip giant said.

Driverless technology could save 585,000 lives between 2035 to 2045, slightly higher than the population of Sheffield, according to Intel, which took the global number of deaths resulting from traffic incidents every year, estimating that self-driving tech could save 5% of these lives. Correspondingly, public safety costs related to traffic incidents could fall by more than $234 billion.

The current truck driver shortage around the world may increase pressure on businesses to introduce self-driving vehicles, for example in the UK it was estimated that there was a shortage of nearly 100,000 drivers and in the US there was a shortage of over 200,000. The study highlights that there are also driver shortages in Brazil, South Africa and India too.

Intel also hypothesised that businesses will increase their IT spending, including cloud services, in order to provide efficient and effective dispatch, transport and CRM to support this. Businesses will have a greater focus on data, too, which will be fundamental to the delivery and use of services.

Organisations' labour requirements will fall as the new technology will replace not only drivers but also the back end of the process, where it will become an IT workflow.

The study concluded that the emergence of this new economy "marks the greatest transition in human mobility since humans left their horses for a new relationship with the horseless carriage".

01/06/2017: Uber's head of finance Gautam Gapta is set to leave the ride-hailing company in July. At the same time, the company's first-quarter losses have narrowed substantially to $708 million.

Uber has confirmed with IT Pro that Gapta will leave in July. Gapta is set to join another startup in San Francisco, leaving Uber to suffer another executive departure. Uber has experienced a number of high-profile departures in the last few months and now the company will be looking for a new official CFO as well as a COO to partner with CEO Travis Kalanick.

Reuters reported that Uber's first-quarter losses narrowed substantially from the previous quarter. Uber declared a net loss of $708 million, excluding employee stock compensation and other items, in Q1 2017, down from $991 million in Q4 2016. Furthermore, Uber's first-quarter revenue rose 18% to $3.4 billion.

An Uber spokesperson said to Reuters: "The narrowing of our losses in the first quarter puts us on a good trajectory towards profitability".

Since Uber is a private company, it does not report its financial results publicly but does confirm figures reported in the media.

Yesterday, it came to light that Uber had fired Anthony Levandowski amid the legal battle with Waymo. Levandowski had refused to cooperate with the investigation in which Waymo claimed that the engineer had stolen thousands of documents from the company relating to self-driving vehicle technology.

31/05/2017: Uber has fired Anthony Levandowski after the engineer failed to cooperate in the ongoing lawsuit with Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Uber general counsel Salle Yoo outlined in Levandowski's termination letter, dated 26 May, that his failure to comply with a court order is the reason for his firing. In the letter, Yoo also wrote that "your failure impeded Uber's internal investigation and defense of the lawsuit".

A federal judge in the ongoing court case between Uber and Alphabet's self-driving car firm, Waymo, granted a preliminary injunction against Uber on 12 May that led the ride-hailing firm to remove Levandowski from any work on Lidar, and to return any stolen documents to Waymo.

Levandowski is accused of downloading 14,000 confidential files before leaving Google's self-driving division in 2016. He went on to start his own self-driving truck company called Otto, which Uber bought in August 2016, six months after he had left his previous employer.

Yoo goes on to underline that Uber required the engineer to have "destroyed all property and confidential information belonging to any prior employer" and by not complying with the court order it's a potential breach and warranty in the employment agreement and an "additional ground for termination".

Levandowski invoked the fifth amendment in order to not to incriminate himself and refused to hand over documents or answer questions during a deposition.

Uber has insisted its technology is different to Waymo's and there is no evidence it has the stolen files on its servers, although it did not check Lewandowski's computer in its search.

The Information Commissioner's office (ICO) has fined mobile taxi-hailing juggernaut Uber 385,000 for failing to protect customer data in its devastating data breach scandal back in 2016.

The incident was a "serious breach of principle seven of the Data Protection Act 1998", said the ICO, and had the potential to expose the affected customers and drivers to increased risk of fraud being carried out against them.

The fine follows another one issued to the company recently in September. After agreeing to terms with all 50 American states and the District of Columbia, Uber agreed to pay $148 million for failing to notify its drivers that their details had been stolen.

The October 2016 data breach in question affected 57 million of the company's drivers. Names, email addresses and phone numbers of over 50 million drivers were stolen and around 7 million drivers were affected, with hackers accessing around 600,000 US driver's license numbers.

In the UK, more than 2.7 million of its British customers and drivers were affected too. Again, names, email addresses and phone numbers were all stolen in the hack and according to an ICO investigation, records of almost 82,000 drivers based in the UK had details of journeys made and how much they were paid stolen.

"This was not only a serious failure of data security on Uber's part, but a complete disregard for the customers and drivers whose personal information was stolen," said Steve Eckersley, ICO Director of Investigations. "At the time, no steps were taken to inform anyone affected by the breach, or to offer help and support. That left them vulnerable."

The data was stolen as a result of "a series of avoidable security flaws" in Uber's cloud-based storage system operated by Uber's US parent company. The ICO investigation also found how Uber's data storage was breached. A process called 'credential stuffing' was used which involves taking compromised username and password pairs and plugging them into websites until user account details were found, which were then used to gain access to the cloud-based storage system.

"We're pleased to close this chapter on the data incident from 2016. As we shared with European authorities during their investigations, we've made a number of technical improvements to the security of our systems both in the immediate wake of the incident as well as in the years since," said an Uber spokesperson. "We learn from our mistakes and continue our commitment to earn the trust of our users every day."

Following the data breach, it was reported that Uber paid the hackers $100,000 ($78,000) for their silence so it could silently cover up the incident behind closed doors.

"Paying the attackers and then keeping quiet about it afterwards was not, in our view, an appropriate response to the cyber attack," said Eckersley. "Although there was no legal duty to report data breaches under the old legislation, Uber's poor data protection practices and subsequent decisions and conduct were likely to have compounded the distress of those affected."

Reports also claim Uber's former CEO Travis Kalanick knew about the breach for over a year. He was forced out of the company in June 2017 amid allegations of sexism and poor working practices.

Uber will pay $245 million (177 million) in the form of company shares to Alphabet's Waymo after reaching a deal to settle a long-running lawsuit over the alleged theft of driverless car technology.

The warring companies struck a deal on a settlement last Friday, only the fifth day of testimony, bringing an end to a legal dispute that has plagued Uber since February last year. The settlement dictates that Uber will hand over a 0.34% equity stake to Alphabet's self-driving car unit.

On top of the fine, Uber has also agreed to not use any Waymo technology in its products, although Uber still maintains it never used trade secrets in its hardware or software.

The deal was reportedly the second attempt to settle the case, with Uber having already rejected a $500 million equity proposal from Google's parent company earlier in the week, according to sources speaking to Reuters.

The final settlement is also substantially lower than the $1 billion Waymo sought when the lawsuit was filed, and it also excludes the creation of an independent monitor to ensure trade secrets are not used. Waymo also initially sought a formal apology from Uber, which was rejected.

The case centred upon the alleged use of stolen industry secrets, thought to have been obtained after Uber bought self-driving tech startup Otto in 2016, founded by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski.

Levandowksi is said to have taken 14,000 confidential documents with him when he left Google, secrets that Waymo alleged were then used to bolster Uber's self-driving research. While Uber acknowledged the existence of the documents, it always maintained that the information was never used as part of its designs, and that it had no idea as to how Levandowski obtained them.

The case has presented a significant obstacle to Uber's self-driving car research, which was pegged as being one of its most profitable future businesses and a means of diversifying the company.

It also allows current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to get past of one of the many hangovers from the Kalanick years, having already dealt with the fallout from allegations of systemic sexism within the company.

While Khosrowshahi has maintained that the documents were not used, he did admit the episode could have been handled better.

"To be clear, while we do not believe that any trade secrets made their way from Waymo to Uber, nor do we believe that Uber has used any of Waymo's proprietary information in its self-driving technology, we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our Lidar and software represents just our good work," said the CEO, in a statement.

"To our friends at Alphabet: we are partners, you are an important investor in Uber, and we share a deep belief in the power of technology to change people's lives for the better. Of course, we are also competitors. And while we won't agree on everything going forward, we agree that Uber's acquisition of Otto could and should have been handled differently."

In a statement to CNBC, a Waymo spokesperson said that the company remained "committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology".

29/11/2017: The latest twist in the self-driving-car case between Alphabet's Waymo and Uber sees the latter accused of "impeding" investigations into the company.

Google's parent firm Alphabet has accused Uber's self-driving development division of stealing its designs, after hiring a former Waymo staffer.

A day before jury selection was set to start, the trial has now been pushed back again, after revelations of a letter detailing Uber's efforts to spy on its rivals. The 37-page letter was sent by a lawyer for Richard Jacobs, a former employee, to Angela Padilla, Uber's deputy general counsel in May or June.

Jacobs told the court of an internal organisation inside Uber called "marketplace analytics" that sought out trade secrets, code and other details from rivals, according to a report in the New York Times. It also sought to "evade, impede, obstruct, influence" lawsuits against Uber, and used burner phones and devices that didn't connect to the Uber network to avoid creating a digital paper trail. Jacobs said some of the languages in the letter was "hyperbolic," according to the Guardian, but said he found the work ethically questionable.

The new information led the case's judge to put off the trial to give Waymo more time to investigate.

"I can no longer trust the words of the lawyers for Uber in this case," Judge William Alsup said. "If even half of what is in that letter is true, it would be an injustice for Waymo to go to trial."

He asked Uber to supply the full copy of the letter to Waymo.

"None of the testimony today changes the merits of the case," an Uber spokeswoman said in a statement. "Jacobs himself said on the stand today that he was not aware of any Waymo trade secrets being stolen."

12/10/2017: Google's Waymo 'wanted $1bn settlement' from Uber

Google's parent firm Alphabet wanted $1 billion in damages from Uber to settle a case surrounding the alleged theft of autonomous car Lidar technology.

Alphabet's self-driving car unit Waymo not only demanded the financial settlement but also wanted a public apology and an independent monitor at Uber to ensure it never used Waymo's intellectual property in future tech development, according to a report from Reuters.

Uber rejected those terms, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the settlement talks.

It wasn't clear when the settlement offer was made, but the court case remains ongoing. Indeed, Waymo recently delayed the suit to give it more time to sift through an Uber due diligence report that was only recently made available to Alphabet's lawyers. Waymo has estimated the total damages at $1.9 billion.

Reuters' sources said no further settlement talks are planned at the moment.

The case centres on a former Waymo staffer named Anthony Levandowski, who departed the firm and started his own self-driving lorry company, which was subsequently bought by Uber. The suit alleges Levandowski brought with him key files on Waymo's laser sensor technology, known as Lidar. Uber has since fired Levandowski for failing to hand over key evidential documents to Waymo.

03/10/2017: Google gets hands on hidden Uber report

A due diligence report Uber commissioned before buying self-driving truck firm Otto has been revealed.

Uber has fought in court to keep secret the details of the report into its own acquisition of self-driving van firm Otto, with Google's Waymo pushing for the details to be released as part of its lawsuit against the ride-hailing firm. Waymo sued Uber, accusing former Google staffer Levandowski of bringing trade secrets regarding self-driving car technology to Uber via his startup Otto.

The due diligence document was produced by a third-party security firm, Stroz Friedberg, and reportedly reveals that Uber was warned prior to its acquisition of Otto that Levandowski had Google Waymo data, including 50,000 work-related emails from his time at Google, according to a ReCode report.

The document says Levandowski "(a) possessed Google information; (b) met with a number of Google employees about joining his start-up company; (c) met with Uber executives, while employed at Google, about forming a new company; and (d) destroyed highly confidential Google proprietary information he had stored on five disks on his personal Drobo 50, including source code, files, and software pertaining to self-driving cars."

Those files included photos of components and diagrams describing Google's radar technology.

While the report sounds damning, Uber noted that it was commissioned to ensure no Google intellectual property leaked to Uber via its Otto acquisition. "Their report, which we are pleased is finally public, helps explain why even after 60 hours of inspection of our facilities, source code, documents and computers no Google material has been found at Uber," a spokesperson said.

Uber fired Levandowski in May after it said he was failing to cooperate in the case.

29/06/2017: Uber denies knowledge of Waymo theft prior to lawsuit

Uber has told a court that it never ordered self-driving car researcher Anthony Levandowski to download technical files from his former employer, Google's Waymo, according to a recent court filing.

Waymo, Google's self-driving car research division, is currently suing Uber for what it says is theft of trade secrets, after it claimed that its former employee Levandowski took almost 14,000 research documents with him went he took up a new position at the ride-sharing firm. This, according to Google, allowed Uber to gain significant ground in its own research efforts.

Uber has since fired Levandowski, and he is not a defendant in the case, however a ruling hinges on his actions and what exactly Uber knew about them.

"This is consistent with the complete lack of evidence that such files exist at, or have ever been used by, Uber," the company said, in a court filing on Wednesday, seen by TechCrunch.

Uber alleges that Levandowski downloaded the files to ensure he received a $120 million bonus from Waymo, although exactly how the files would have helped him achieve this was not explained.

However Waymo point to Uber's own testimony in an earlier filing, which said that during a meeting on 11 March 2016, Levandowski had told then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick that he had five discs of Waymo material.

"And even after finding out that he had Waymo materials in his possession, Uber never took any steps to prohibit Levandowski from using his 'treasure trove of files' in his work at Uber," said Waymo.

While Uber acknowledges that the meeting took place, it claims it had no knowledge of how they had came into his possession. Once the source was revealed, the company claims it wanted nothing to do with the discs.

"Kalanick emphatically told Levandowski that Uber did not want any such information, that Levandowski should not bring any such information to Uber, and to talk to his lawyer," Uber said.

Waymo has since refuted this claim in a statement to Recode, saying that the evidence "clearly shows that stolen information has already made its way into Uber's technology" and that "rather than do the right thing, Uber took part in a coverup, only firing Mr Levandowski after their actions were exposed in litigation."

The case is still on going and both companies due to appear in court in October.

31/05/2017: Uber fires Anthony Levandowski

Uber has fired Anthony Levandowski after the engineer failed to cooperate in the ongoing lawsuit with Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Uber general counsel Salle Yoo outlined in Levandowski's termination letter, dated 26 May, that his failure to comply with a court order is the reason for his firing. In the letter, Yoo also wrote that "your failure impeded Uber's internal investigation and defense of the lawsuit".

A federal judge in the ongoing court case between Uber and Alphabet's self-driving car firm, Waymo, granted a preliminary injunction against Uber on 12 May that led the ride-hailing firm to remove Levandowski from any work on Lidar, and to return any stolen documents to Waymo.

Levandowski is accused of downloading 14,000 confidential files before leaving Google's self-driving division in 2016. He went on to start his own self-driving truck company called Otto, which Uber bought in August 2016, six months after he had left his previous employer.

Yoo goes on to underline that Uber required the engineer to have "destroyed all property and confidential information belonging to any prior employer" and by not complying with the court order it's a potential breach and warranty in the employment agreement and an "additional ground for termination".

Levandowski invoked the fifth amendment in order to not to incriminate himself and refused to hand over documents or answer questions during a deposition.

Uber has insisted its technology is different to Waymo's and there is no evidence it has the stolen files on its servers, although it did not check Lewandowski's computer in its search.

Uber's CISO yesterday admitted that there was "no justification" for covering up a huge data breach affecting millions of customers and drivers.

The breach, which was first reported in November last year, exposed the personal information of 57 million users, including 2.7 million in the UK, as well as the license numbers of roughly 600,000 drivers.

Uber's John Flynn told US lawmakers at a Senate hearing yesterday that the company made an error in not disclosing the intrusion to the authorities and to its customers, saying: "We made a misstep in not reporting to consumers, and I think we made a misstep in not reporting to law enforcement."

Rather than report the breach, Uber paid one of the two hackers responsible $100,000 to keep the breach under wraps and to not leak the stolen data.

Senators also noted that while Uber was covering this breach up, it was in the midst of negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission over a settlement for an earlier data breach.

The money was delivered through a bug bounty programme - a framework usually used to reward ethical hackers for reporting flaws to companies rather than exploiting them. Flynn acknowledged in his testimony that this use of the bug bounty programme was 'inappropriate'.

"We recognise that the bug bounty programme is not an appropriate vehicle for dealing with intruders who seek to extort funds from the company," he said. "The approach that these intruders took was separate and distinct from those of the researchers in the security community for whom bug bounty programs are designed."

Legislators slammed Uber over its conduct, calling its actions "morally wrong and legally reprehensible".

"There ought to be no question here that Uber's payment of this blackmail without notifying consumers who were greatly at risk was morally wrong and legally reprehensible and violated not only the law but the norm of what should be expected," said Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal.

"The fact that the company took approximately a year to notify impacted users raises red flags within this committee as to what systemic issues prevented such time-sensitive information from being made available to those left vulnerable," added Republican and Senate panel chairman senator Jerry Moran.

Uber's application to renew its licence in York has been rejected by the city's council, making it the third city in the UK to ban the service amid rising complaints and concerns around its recent data breach, which affected 2.7 million UK customers.

The Gambling, Licensing, and Regulatory Committee for the City of York Council has said it has blocked its application to renew its license, which is due to expire on Christmas Eve.

The council believed that Uber did not meet the 'fit and proper' classification that is required in order for a license application to be successful, citing concerns around the massive data breach that the company covered up until it was exposed last month.

"The application by Uber Britannia Ltd to renew its private hire operator's licence in York has been considered by City of York Council's Gambling, Licensing and Regulatory Committee tonight," said a City of York Council spokesperson.

"Applying the legislation, the committee has decided to refuse the application having concerns about a data breach currently under investigation and the number of complaints received. Anyone with concerns about taxis working in the city are asked to report them to public.protection@york.gov.uk."

Uber has the right to appeal the decision within 21 days of the decision, and if submitted, its license would remain in force until a decision was reached.

Uber disclosed in November that not only had it been affected by a massive data breach in 2016, but it had since attempted to cover it up by paying the hackers $100,000 for their silence. The company has since been widely criticised for its handling of the breach, which is thought to have affected over 57 million users globally.

The rejection comes less than a week after Sheffield voted to similarly suspend Uber's license to operate in the city after the company failed to respond to requests for information about its management, with its current license due to expire on 18 December.

In September, a license renewal was also rejected in London after the company was similarly deemed not 'fit and proper' to operate in the city.

Neil McGonigle, Uber's general manager for York, who present at the meeting on Tuesday, told the Yorkshire Post: "This is a disappointing vote for the riders and drivers who use our app in the city. More choice and competition is a good thing for both consumers and licensed drivers in the area. We will review the details of the decision once we receive the formal notice from the council."

Image: Bigstock

The ICO said the way in which Uber dealt with a major data breach has raised "huge concerns" over the company's data protection policies and ethics.

The UK's data regulation body said concealing a data breach should come with a much larger fine than the standard penalities imposed on organisations that fail to sufficiently protect their customers' data. Uber is alleged to have paid the hackers $100,000 not to mention it had hacked the taxi booking app's systems, according to Bloomberg.

"It's always the company's responsibility to identify when UK citizens have been affected as part of a data breach and take steps to reduce any harm to consumers," ICO deputy commissioner James Dipple-Johnstone said in a statement.

"If UK citizens were affected then we should have been notified so that we could assess and verify the impact on people whose data was exposed."

The ICO said it would investigate into the breach, including ascertaining how many UK citizens have been affected and to what extent. Uber revealed that information such as names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers had been accessed, but there's currently no evidence that social security numbers, payment details and trip data was stolen.

"We'll be working with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) plus other relevant authorities in the UK and overseas to determine the scale of the breach, how it has affected people in the UK and what steps need to be taken by the firm to ensure it fully complies with its data protection obligations," Dipple-Johnstone added.

The NCSC has also spoken out against Uber's actions, saying that any company that finds it has been subject of a cyber attack shoud report it immediately for the safety of citizens.

"The more information a company shares in a timely manner, the better able we are to support them and prevent others falling victim," it said.

Uber tried to hide a massive data breach, affecting 57 million drivers and users, the company has admitted.

The cover up involved payments of $100,000 (75,000) to the hackers, according to Bloomberg, which broke the news.

The breach happened in October 2016, and encompassed names, email addresses and phone numbers of over 50 million users of the service from around the world. Around 7 million drivers were also affected, with hackers accessing around 600,000 US driver's license numbers.

Reports claim Uber's former chief executive Travis Kalanick has known about the breach for over a year. Kalanick was forced out of the company in June, after months of controversies relating to sexism and poor working practices. He was replaced in August by former Expedia boss, Dara Khosrowshahi.

"While we have not seen evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident, we are monitoring the affected accounts and have flagged them for additional fraud protection," Khosrowshahi said in a statement.

"None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it," he added. "While I can't erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes."

In the wake of the revelation, Uber has fired its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan. The company has also set up pages for drivers and riders that may have been affected by the hack. These emphasise that the company has seen no evidence for fraud. It mentions that Uber will offer drivers free credit monitoring and identity theft protection, but doesn't extend this to users of the service.

"Our outside forensics experts have not seen any indication that trip location history, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers or dates of birth were downloaded," the page explains.

Two hackers managed to access a private GitHub site for Uber software engineers, according to Bloomberg. They were able to grab login credentials from there, which allowed them to access an Amazon Web Services account for Uber. There they found an archive of driver and user information, and blackmailed the company for money.

Uber has not had a great year, to put it mildly. The resignation of Kalanick was clearly intended to distance the company from mounting claims of allowing a sexist working environment, and came in the wake of reports that Uber's boss in Asia had been fired for obtaining medical records of a woman who had been raped by an Uber driver. The bad news has continued to amount since Khosrowshahi joined the company, however. The ride sharing company has lost its licence to operate in London, and recently lost an appeal in the UK over how its workers should be categorised.

Uber has reportedly signed an investment agreement with SoftBank, in a deal that could see the Japanese giant funnel $10 billion into the ride-hailing firm.

Uber first agreed to a SoftBank investment over a month ago, but talks stalled after a lawsuit was brought against Kalanick by Benchmark Capital, according to Reuters. The suit allegedly claimed the former CEO misled stockholders to secure two additional empty board seats, which he then filled earlier this month without board approval.

As part of the agreement, Benchmark said it will suspend its lawsuit against Kalanick, which is reportedly likely to be dropped entirely once the investment has been completed. Uber has reportedly agreed terms with SoftBank, but not an overall sum.

"We've entered into an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer on a potential investment," said Uber in a statement to IT Pro. "We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Uber's long-term potential. Upon closing, it will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance."

The Japanese investment giant will be joined by Dragoneer Investment Group, and will lead consortium of other smaller investors that are expected to invest another $1 billion and also buy up to 17% of the company's shares from existing investors at a lower valuation.

The deal will be considered a major victory for Uber and its new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Uber's board has approved a host of reforms that will remove the mechanisms that gave Kalanick disproportionately high voting power, including the super-voting rights, and new independent directors will be added to increase the board's overall number to 17.

17/10/2017: Uber's SoftBank investment to be finalised in the next week

Uber board member Arianna Huffington is confident that an Uber-SoftBank deal could be finalised within the next week.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's technology event, D.Live, yesterday, she said it was "very likely" that a deal between the Japanese tech giant and US ride-sharing firm would be struck shortly, according to TechCrunch.

Huffington said the deal would involve a direct investment in the company at the last private valuation round, and also a secondary transaction that would involve buying out existing shareholders.

But she added that Uber is still "waiting on what's going to transpire in terms of the price".

Having SoftBank "on your cap[italisation] table is very important when they're also investing in so many of our competitors around the world", she said, and expects to see more consolidation in the ride-sharing space.

Uber is trying to turn itself around after experiencing a culture crisis in 2017, during which it lost its longtime CEO and founder, Travis Kalanick, and conducted internal and external reviews as a result of allegations of widespread sexism within the firm. It also lost its London operating licence last month, affecting 40,000 drivers in the capital.

"If your culture is so driven by growth at the expense of other things, there are consequences," said Huffington. "Culture, we're now recognising, is the immune system of a company."

She called Uber's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, "unflappable" and that his "goal is to get people to love the company and not just the product". He also has a greater focus on cost-cutting, in order to meet the goal of taking Uber public by 2019, she said.

Uber is involved in an ongoing legal battle with Google's self-driving car unit Waymo, which still needs to be resolved.

04/10/2017: Uber to go public in 2019 after board shakeup

Uber is scheduled to go public in 2019, after a shakeup to the company's board of directors was agreed last night.

The changes are designed to limit the power that Uber's founder Travis Kalanick has over the company, curtailing the inflated voting power of shares owned by Kalanick and other early staff and investors. An extra six seats have also been added to the board, making it easier to overrule Kalanick and his friends when it comes to large decisions - such as any future votes to reinstate him as CEO.

The restructuring comes as Uber frantically attempts to repair its reputation. The embattled company is coming to the end of a difficult year in which it has lurched from one scandal to the next. First came Susan Fowler's allegations of systemic sexism, followed by calls to boycott uber in the midst of outrage over Trump's travel ban.

Then came regulatory pressure over 'Greyball', a string of high-profile departures from the company (including Kalanick himself) and, most recently, the decision by TfL not to renew the company's license to operate in London.

Many, both within Uber and without, have laid the blame for the company's woes at the feet of Kalanick himself, and the founder admitted earlier this year that he "must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up".

As well as reigning in Kalanick, the decisions have also removed the last obstacles standing in the way of a $1 billion investment from Japanese tech giant Softbank. The company has been flexing its muscles this year, making a series of high-profile investments and acquisitions of companies including ARM, Slack, and possibly even Toshiba's memory chip business.

"Today, after welcoming its new directors Ursula Burns and John Thain, the board voted unanimously to move forward with the proposed investment by SoftBank and with governance changes that would strengthen its independence and ensure equality among all shareholders," Uber said.

"SoftBank's interest is an incredible vote of confidence in Uber's business and long-term potential, and we look forward to finalising the investment in the coming weeks."

Kalanick's comments on the matter were equally effusive, saying: "Today the Board came together collaboratively and took a major step forward in Uber's journey to becoming a world-class public company."

"We approved moving forward with the Softbank transaction and reached unanimous agreement on a new governance framework that will serve Uber well. Under Dara's leadership and with strong guidance from the board, we should expect great things ahead for Uber."

Not everyone is pleased about the changes, however. Top Uber investors Steve Russell and Shervin Pishevar threatened a lawsuit following the decision, which would remove the tenfold voting power of their Class B common shares compared to regular Class A shares held by other investors.

"Today's action by the board was the culmination of a blatant bait and switch, essentially robbing loyal employees, including the more than 200 early founding Uber employees and advisors, of their hard earned shareholder rights," the two investors said in a statement.

"They may think they have won a battle today but rest assured they will lose the war."

Uber has lost its appeal over a ruling that UK drivers for the ride-sharing service be entitled to basic workers' rights.

In move that the union for professional drivers the GMB is calling a "vindication" for its campaign, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) has decided to uphold a ruling that Uber employees be classified as workers rather than self-employed.

The company had disputed an October 2016 ruling, which determined that Uber drivers should be entitled to basic workers' rights including holiday pay and a guaranteed minimum wage. Uber claimed the ruling would deprive drivers of the "personal flexibility they value".

GMB has said it is "delighted" at the decision made today by EAT to uphold the original employment tribunal ruling.

"This landmark decision is yet more vindication for GMB's campaign to ensure drivers are given the rights they are entitled to and that the public, drivers and passengers are kept safe," said Maria Ludkin, GMB's legal director.

"Uber must now face up to its responsibilities and give its workers the rights to which they are entitled. [] GMB urges the company not to waste everyone's time and money dragging their lost cause to the Supreme Court."

Uber UK's acting general manager, Tom Elvidge, said: "Almost all taxi and private hire drivers have been self-employed for decades, long before our app existed. The main reason why drivers use Uber is because they value the freedom to choose if, when and where they drive and so we intend to appeal.

"The tribunal relies on the assertion that drivers are required to take 80 per cent of trips sent to them when logged into the app. As drivers who use Uber know, this has never been the case in the UK.

"Over the last year we have made a number of changes to our app to give drivers even more control. We've also invested in things like access to illness and injury cover and we'll keep introducing changes to make driving with Uber even better."

Frances O'Grady, general secretary for the Trade Union Congress (TUC), said: "Uber should throw in the towel and accept today's judgment. No company, however big or well-connected, is above the law. Uber must play by the rules and stop denying its drivers basic rights at work.

"This ruling should put gig economy employers on notice. Unions will expose nasty schemes that try and cheat workers out of the minimum wage and holiday pay. Sham self-employment exploits people and scams the taxman."

Uber has revealed it's planning to go public in 2019, despite coming under fire across the globe for failing to run its operation in the "fit and proper" way, losing its London licence for operation and shutting down in other countries.

The company's new boss, Dara Khosrowshahi, revealed the taxi service's intentions at the New York Times' Dealbook conference yesterday, saying that he expects the company to launch its bid for IPO in 2019. Previously, the company said it would be looking at a timeline of 18-36 months.

Khosrowshahi referred to the troubles the business has faced over the last 12 months, saying remaining private "has all the disadvantage of being a public company, with the spotlight on us, with none of the advantages".

Khosrowshahi's predecessor and company founder, Travis Kalanick, reportedly had no interest in taking the company to the stock exchange, but the new chief seems to think it's the right decision to grow the company's future (and possibly scrape back some of its reputation).

However, Uber's CEO did explain that going public wouldn't affect the company's negotiations with SoftBank, which is investing in the ride-hailing company, despite the Japanese firm saying it has no interest in going public.

Uber is due to receive a substantial amount of investment from SoftBank. However, just two days ago, SoftBank's CEO Masayoshi Son told a press conference at its earnings call that actually the company may halt its investment in Uber and instead back Lyft's services.

"Depending on the price and conditions, it is wholly possible we could shift our investment to the other main company Lyft. It is wholly possible. We won't know until the very end," he said.

He explained a number of conditions will come into play, including whether the price is right, the number of board members SoftBank will be allowed to have, voting rights and "the buying process".

Three female software engineers filed a lawsuit against Uber in San Francisco on Tuesday, claiming the company discriminates against women and ethnic minorities.

Ingrid Avendano, Roxana del Toro Lopez and Ana Medina, who filed the lawsuit, all claim they have lost earnings, benefits and promotions because of their gender and race.

The lawsuit states Uber used a employee ranking system that is "not based on valid and reliable performance measures", and favours white, male employees, as well as those of [East] Asian origin. It further claims that women, Latino, Native American, and black employees, are given lower performance scores on this system, which makes it more difficult for these groups to grow and advance professionally.

The lawsuit also claims that women and ethnic minorities lose out on pay rises, bonuses, stock options and other benefits because of the company's discriminatory practices.

"These three engineers are seeking to ensure that Uber pays women and people of color equally for the hard work they've done and will continue to do to help make Uber successful," said lawyer Jahan Sagafi of Outten & Golden which is representing the plaintiffs, as reported by Reuters.

While Medina is still employed at Uber, Avendano and Toro Lopez recently resigned after more than two years with the company.

This lawsuit is another in a long line of problems Uber has been facing with the treatment of its employees, including former Uber engineer Susan Fowler's allegations of systemic sexism at the company, which she detailed in a blog post.

Uber has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Uber's head of HR has never met with the engineer whose blog post raised the curtain on allegations of sexism and harassment at the ride-hailing firm.

Liane Hornsey, who joined Uber a month before Susan Fowler detailed various allegations of widespread chauvinism and systemic sexism at the company, admitted she hasn't met with Fowler to discuss the issues since in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

She said: "I have said, very publicly, "Thank you" to her because she raised some stuff that did lead to change. I don't know whether there would be any benefit in meeting her. I'm seriously working for my employees today; she's an ex-employee."

Fowler responded on Twitter to remark: "She really, really doesn't like me."

Hornsey, who joined Uber in January after Fowler left in December 2016, said Fowler's blog post "was very difficult for this company", and resulted in HR carrying out 200 "listening sessions", and a personal promise from her to answer every employee email within 48 hours.

Uber charged a former attorney general with leading an external review into Uber's practices, and accepted 47 recommendations his report made in June - the implementation of most of these is Hornsey's responsibility.

She said: "I truly believe we're making progress on all of them, with the exception of a couple that we've held off on." One is hiring a chief diversity officer, which she wants new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to weigh in on, and another is reviewing Uber's cultural values, which also requires his input.

But Fowler, who had dismissed the external review as "optics" at the time, also criticised Hornsey's comments around having difficulty finding female engineers to interview for roles (another recommendation), after the HR chief said Uber had found and made contact with 1,800 of them.

"Did ya'll know that there are only 1800 women engineers? Uber has identified them all," Fowler remarked sarcastically.

Hornsey also said diversity is a priority for Uber's new CEO, who has already contrasted with former boss Travis Kalanick's style by admitting "we've got things wrong" in response to TfL's refusal to renew the ride-hailing firm's licence to operate in London last month.

Uber's top exec in the UK has quit the troubled firm, just as its CEO is set to meet with regulators in London over the loss of its operating license.

Jo Bertram has quit as regional general manager for Northern Europe, saying another role has popped up that's more appealing. She'll stay on for the next few weeks for the "best possible transition", she said in an email to staff seen by Business Insider, noting that she would have liked to "have announced my move in smoother circumstances".

Transport for London last week revealed it wasn't renewing Uber's licence to operate in the capital, with CEO Dara Khosrowshahi set to meet with the regulators this week. Uber also faces disruption at the board level, with founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick appointing his own picks ahead of expected restructuring.

Until her successor is named, Bertram's role in the UK will be taken up by acting general manager for the UK Tom Elvidge. Bertram has worked for Uber for four years, spearheading the startup's rollout in the UK, in particular London. She suggested she was leaving because "an exciting new opportunity has arisen".

However, Bertram added that the ongoing controversy made it a good time for her to depart. "Given some of our current challenges, I'm also convinced that now is the right time to have a change of face, and to hand over to someone who will be here for the long haul and take us into the next phase," she said in an email to staff.

29/09/2017: Uber's CEO to meet TfL transport boss next week

Uber's newly appointed CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will meet transport commissioner Mike Brown next Tuesday.

A TfL spokesperson confirmed the meeting with IT Pro: "Following an approach from Uber, and at the Mayor's request, London's Transport Commissioner will meet with Uber's global CEO in London next Tuesday."

"Our new CEO is looking forward to meeting with the commissioner next week," an Uber spokesman said to IT Pro. "As he said on Monday, we want to work with London to make things right."

Transport for London (TfL) decided to refrain from issuing Uber with a private hire operator licence last week which means it will no longer be able to operate legally in London. Uber had 21 days to appeal and its service will continue until the appeal process has been exhausted.

Sadiq Khan also invited Khosrowshahi to meet after Uber's CEO issued a public apology after the ban had been announced. Khosrowshahi published a letter in the Evening Standard where he said: "We've got things wrong along the way" when talking about the ban. He confirmed Uber would appeal the decision and accepted the service needs to change to comply with legislation."

Khosrowshahi was appointed Uber CEO in August following the dismissal of co-founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. Uber has been trying to clean up its company's image following allegations of systemic sexism and anti-competitive practices over the past year.

Image source: Uber

29/09/2017: Sadiq Khan asks TfL to meet Uber after CEO's apology

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has invited the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, to meet after he issued a public apology following its ban in London, which is set to come into force from the end of the month.

"I welcome the apology from Dara Khosrowshahi, the Uber CEO. Obviously I am pleased that he has acknowledged the issues that Uber faces in London," Khan said. "Even though there is a legal process in place, I have asked TfL to make themselves available to meet with him."

Khosrowshahi said in an official letter published in the Evening Standard that it's been amazing to hear messages of support from everyone that uses the service and its drivers who have said they'll stand by the company's side as it deals with the legal action served by TfL.

"While Uber has revolutionised the way people move in cities around the world, it's equally true that we've got things wrong along the way," Khosrowshahi said. "On behalf of everyone at Uber globally, I apologise for the mistakes we've made."

He confirmed Uber would appeal against the decision on behalf of Londoners, and he accepted the service needs to change in order to meet legislation.

"As Uber's new CEO, it is my job to help Uber write its next chapter," Khosrowshahi continued. "We won't be perfect, but we will listen to you; we will look to be long-term partners with the cities we serve; and we will run our business with humility, integrity and passion."

25/09/2017: Sadiq Khan criticises Uber 'aggression' following TfL ban

The Mayor of London has accused Uber of bringing "unfair pressure" onto Transport for London (TfL) following the body's decision to ban the ride-hailing company from the capital.

TfL found Uber was not "fit and proper" to hold a private operator licence last Friday, meaning its licence will expire on 30 September without being renewed.

Uber, which has 40,000 drivers in the capital and millions of users, took to Twitter to promote its Change.org petition to reverse the ban, which has garnered 737,000 signatures at the time of writing, and defended its business in a series of tweets.

Uber said: "We intend to challenge this in the courts to defend the livelihoods of drivers & the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use Uber.Uber drivers in London pass the same DBS background checks as other private hire services - see their name, photo & TfL license number in-app.

"We put safety at the forefront - each Uber trip is tracked and recorded by GPS. We have always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents, with a dedicated team that works closely with the Metropolitan Police."

In response, Mayor Sadiq Khan told Radio 4's Today programme this morning that Uber was bringing the full might of its PR to weigh against the ruling.

"What you can't do, is have a situation where unfair pressure is brought on a quasi-judicial body where there are officials working incredibly hard," he said, as quoted by the BBC.

"I appreciate Uber has an army of PR experts, I appreciate Uber has an army of lawyers - they've also made aggressive threats about taking us to court."

In its decision, TfL said Uber's approach to operating its business demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility, pointing to a failure to report serious criminal offences, its approach to medical certificates, and its use of Greyball software that can stop regulatory bodies accessing Uber's full app.

Uber responded: "As shared with TfL, an independent review found that 'Greyball' has never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL."

It also warned that its fleet of 40,000 drivers would suffer from TfL's decision.

In a statement addressing the petition, Khan said: "I know that Uber has become a popular service for many Londoners - but it would be wrong for TfL to license Uber if there was any way this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety or security.

"I have every sympathy with Uber drivers and customers affected by this decision but their anger really should be directed at Uber. They have let down their drivers and customers by failing, in the view of TfL, to act as a fit and proper operator."

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick appointed two new directors to the company's board last week.

The decision was seen as a way to take advance action against a move by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who wants to restructure the board to gain more control, according to Reuters.

Kalanick appointed former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns and former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to the positions.

In a statement obtained by Reuters he said: "I am appointing these seats now in light of a recent board proposal to dramatically restructure the board and significantly alter the company's voting rights. It is therefore essential that the full board be in place for proper deliberation to occur, especially with such experienced board members as Ursula and John." He did not specify which proposals he is against.

Uber told IT Pro it viewed the new appointments as a "complete surprise".

"That is precisely why we are working to put in place world-class governance to ensure that we are building a company every employee and shareholder can be proud of," the company said in a statement.

In June 2016, Uber's board of directors was increased from eight members to 11, giving Kalanick the authority to choose the three empty seats. When he resigned as Uber's CEO in June 2017 he appointed himself to one of the seats, and has now finally filled the other two.

A Reuters source said Kalanick's move came ahead of Khosrowshahi's plan to restructure the company's board, which will be voted on tomorrow, to give the new CEO control of four board seats as well as his own. He wants to transfer one of the two positions controlled by Kalanick to SoftBank, the private fund that is considering investing in Uber.

Khosrowshahi could then give the other seat to a person he chooses as well as three others which currently exist, according to the source. The plan also calls for a third of directors to be elected each year.

Neither Uber nor Kalanick has responded to request for comment.

Benchmark Capital, one of Uber's biggest investors, sued Kalanick for fraud in August. The venture capital firm was upset as it claimed it would not have agreed to give Kalanick the extra seats in June 2016 if it was aware of his "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber". Kalanick faced numerous scandals when he was CEO of Uber, including claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Uber CEO Khosrowshahi is set to meet Transport for London's (TfL) transport commissioner Mike Brown this week in order to talk about why Uber's private hire operator licence was not renewed. Uber was told it will no longer be able to operate in London last month and had 21 days to appeal TfL's decision.

TfL said Uber was not fit to hold a private operator licence as it "is not fit and proper". TfL added that the company demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility, which includes Uber's failure to report serious criminal offences and its approach to medical certificates.

14/08/2017:Uber investors 'ask Benchmark to step down from board'

Three Uber investors have reportedly asked venture capital firm Benchmark Capital to step down from the ride-hailing company's board of directors, a day after the VC confirmed it's suing founder Travis Kalanick for fraud.

Benchmark's fraud lawsuit would see former CEO Kalanick ousted from Uber's board, and consequently a group of shareholders emailed other Uber investors and its board of directors, arguing that Benchmark should divest enough shares to no longer have board appointment rights, according toAxios.

The investors are Shervin Pishevar from Sherpa Capital, Ron Burkle of Yucaipa Cos and Adam Leber from Maverick, the publication reports.

In an email, obtained by Axios, they write: "We do not feel it was either prudent or necessary from the standpoint of shareholder value, to hold the company hostage to a public relations disaster by demanding Mr. Kalanick's resignation, along with other concessions, on a few hours' notice and within weeks of a personal tragedy, under threat of public scandal."

The investors fear that the lawsuit will cost the company "public goodwill" and impede the search for a new CEO. They point out Benchmark's investment of $27 million is worth $8.4 billion today and ask them to consider the employees of the company "who worked so hard to create such unprecedented value".

They requested: "...that Benchmark remove its representative from the Company's Board and move promptly to divest itself of enough shares in the Company so as to cease to have Board appointment rights. We have investors ready to acquire these shares as soon as we receive communication from Benchmark that they are willing to withdraw their lawsuit and sell a minimum of 75% of their holdings."

The investors also asked for the board to vote on the matter at the board meeting last Friday and said that if any other shareholders wanted to join their petition they were more than welcome.

A statement was sent out by Uber co-founder and chairman Garett Camp on behalf of all directors on Friday which said: "The Board of Directors is disappointed that a disagreement between shareholders has resulted in litigation. The Board has urged both parties to resolve the matter cooperatively and quickly, and the Board is taking steps to facilitate that process.

"At a time when thousands of employees around the world are working hard to serve our drivers and riders and continue to innovate, our priority remains to select Uber's new CEO as quickly as possible. We are fortunate to have several outstanding candidates who share our belief in Uber's great future."

Benchmark is suing Kalanick for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud. It is reportedly not happy that Kalanick increased Uber's board from eight members to 11 while giving the former CEO the power to choose who fills those seats. The venture capital firm claimed it would never have agreed to the decision if it had known of the "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber".

11/08/2017: Travis Kalanick sued for fraud in bid to oust him from Uber's board

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is being sued by Benchmark Capital, one of the company's biggest investors, for fraud in a move that looks to oust him from the ride-sharing company's board.

The venture capital firm owns 13% of the ride-hailing company and is suing Kalanick, who owns 10%, for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty as well as fraud, according to Axios.

In its lawsuit, Benchmark claims that Kalanick tried to increase his power over Uber for his own "selfish ends". Benchmark is not happy with a decision from June 2016 where Uber's board was increased from eight members to 11, which gave Kalanick the authority to choose who takes the empty seats. Kalanick later naming himself as a board member once he resigned as CEO, whke a further two seats remained empty.

This move upset Benchmark, which the venture capital firm claimed it would not have agreed to giving Kalanick the extra seats if it was aware of his "gross mismanagement and other misconduct at Uber".

Benchmark said that by withholding that information, which includes everything from pervasive gender discrimination at the company to an Uber employee allegedly taking trade secrets from a competitor, it annuls Benchmark's vote to increase the size of the board.

It said: "Kalanick's overarching objective is to pack Uber's Board with loyal allies in an effort to insulate his prior conduct from scrutiny and clear the path for his eventual return as CEO--all to the detriment of Uber's stockholders, employees, driver-partners, and customers."

The VC firm was also one of the five major investors which demanded Kalanick's resignation back in June.If successful, Benchmark will kick Uber off its board of directors.

Benchmark is seeking to overturn the June 2016 vote which would mean the three extra board seats would be eliminated. This would remove Kalanick from Uber's board of directors. Benchmark has also asked for a preliminary injunction against Kalanick's continued involvement in the Uber board which would prevent him from being included in the ongoing CEO search.

A spokesperson for Uber told IT Pro that it is not commenting on this.

In June 2017, Kalanick officially resigned as CEO of Uber after bowing to mounting pressure from investors over his leadership of the company. He faced numerous scandals over recent months, which included claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace. Benchmark was one of five major investors who demanded the he would resign.

He was Uber CEO since he co-founded the company in 2009 and helped it to grow to the company it is today, valued at nearly $70 billion. The company also has an ongoing intellectual property lawsuit with Waymo, Google's self driving car unit.

23/06/2017: Uber staffers petition to get ex CEO Travis Kalanick rehired

Some Uber employees miss Travis Kalanick, so much so that they have set up a petition begging for the former CEO to return.

According to an Axios report, a thousand Uber staffers have signed a joint letter to the board of directors, calling for the return of Kalanick, who left following a series of controversies (see below).

The report said the petition was circulated among Uber employees, with roughly 10% signing it in the first 12 hours.

"As the folks who've actually worked alongside Travis for years to help create Uber from nothing, we are extremely disappointed by the short-sightedness and pure self-interest demonstrated by those who are supposed to protect the long-term interests of our company," the letter reads.

"Yes, Travis is flawed, as we all are. But his passion, vision, and dedication to Uber are simply unmatched," it continued. "We would not be here today without him, and believe he can evolve into the leader we need. He is critical to our future success."

Business Insider also has a collection of quotes from staffers praising Kalanick for "inspiring an entire generation of entrepreneurs," his dedication and hard work, and his listening skills as well as his propensity to take selfies.

Not all agree, of course. Susan Fowler, a former Uber staffer who wrote a blog post last year revealing sexual harassment issues at the company, noted that seeing former colleagues defend the company was "sickening".

"My first sickening experience was seeing a bunch of my old teammates doing that Uber graffiti thing," she said in a Twitter thread. "Things got worse from there."

21/06/2017: Uber's Travis Kalanick resigns as CEO

Uber's long-embattled CEO, Travis Kalanick, finally bowed to mounting pressure from investors over his leadership by resigning from the company.

Kalanick, who was forced to take a leave of absence last week, faced criticism after numerous scandals emerged over recent months, including claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Five major Uber investors, including venture capital firm Benchmark, demanded on Tuesday that the CEO resign immediately, according to theNew York Times.

"I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors' request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight," said Kalanick, in a statement published by the New York Times.

Kalanick has been Uber's CEO since he co-founded the company in 2009, helping to turn it into one of the most disruptive and influential transportation companies in the world, valued at nearly $70 billion.

But Uber has faced one problem after another over the past few months. The firm was subjected to both internal and external workplace reviews after former employee Susan Fowler claimed she had been the victim of sexual harassment, adding that her complaints were dismissed by the firm.

Uber has also been plagued with legal woes, including an intellectual property lawsuit from Google's self-driving car unit Waymo that has yet to be resolved, and the US Department of Justice launched an investigation in May after the discovery of the software 'Greyball', a tool that helped Uber drivers avoid authorities trying to clamp down on the service.

The ride-hailing firm has since committed to tidying up its practices, firing more than 20 employees as a result of the investigations and committing to workplace culture changes. Following that commitment, Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence, however investors clearly felt this wasn't enough to reform the company.

Bill Gurley, who is a partner at Benchmark and also sits on Uber's board, was one of the earliest supporters of Kalanick, and paid tribute to his work in a tweet on Tuesday evening.

Kalanick's resignation comes at a time when Uber's future remains uncertain, as it could still face significant legal fallout from its case with Waymo. It is reported that the former CEO will remain on Uber's board of directors, and will likely retain some influence in the company as its majority shareholder.

14/06/2017: Uber's Travis Kalanick steps back from CEO role

Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, is to take a leave of absence following a damning review of management practices at the firm and the death of his mother.

Kalanick wrote to staff to explain his decision, which came after his mother died in a boating accident recently, while his father remains in a critical condition.

But his stepping back also coincides with the release of recommendations from a review into Uber's culture and management practices prompted by accusations of endemic sexism by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, published in a blog post in February.

Recodepublished Kalanick's email in full, with the message reading: "Recent events have brought home for me that people are more important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team.

"The ultimate responsibility, for where we've gotten and how we've gotten here rests on my shoulders. There is of course much to be proud of but there is much to improve. For Uber 2.0 to succeed there is nothing more important than dedicating my time to building out the leadership team. But if we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve."

When Kalanick does eventually return, it will be in a diminished role after the company pledged to follow the recommendations of the review, conducted by former Attorney General Eric Holder's law firm, Covinton & Burling. In its report, the firm said there should be a review and reallocation of Kalanick's duties.

"The board should evaluate the extent to which some of the responsibilities that Mr Kalanick has historically possessed should be shared or given outright to other members of senior management. The search for a Chief Operating Officer should address this concern to some extent," the report said.

It also called for "key metrics" to be established to hold senior leaders to account during performance reviews, as well as increasing the profile of Uber's head of diversity, Bernard Coleman, renaming his role 'chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Covington urged Uber to add more independent seats to the board, and to create an oversight committee for ethics and culture, as well as making diversity and inclusion a factor in senior employees' compensation.

"Uber should ensure it has appropriatetools, including complaint tracking software, to keep better track of complaints,personnel records, and employee data," the report added, after Fowler alleged that her HR complaints about a superior were mishandled.

She reacted to the report on Twitter, saying: "They'll never apologize. I've gotten nothing but aggressive hostility from them. It's all optics."

The company has also seen another high-profile resignation this week, after leaked audio from a meeting of Uber's board to investigate the claims of sexism showed one of the male board members making a sexist joke.

Referring to the recent appointment of another woman, Wan Ling Martello, board member Arianna Huffington can be heard saying: "There's a lot of data that shows when there's one woman on the board, it's much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board."

Fellow board member David Bonderman responded: "Actually what it shows is it's much likely to be more talking."

Bonderman resigned around 12 hours after the audio was leaked, due to the "inappropriate" comment.

The full audio can be heard atYahoo News.

12/06/2017: Uber board agrees to sexism review culture changes

Uber's executive board has unanimously agreed to implement all the recommendations suggested by an external investigation, launched after allegations of systemic sexism and malpractice.

The recommendations are to be kept secret until they are formally shared with employees tomorrow, so it is unclear exactly what Uber board members agreed to on Sunday.

The Holder Report, overseen by former Attorney General Eric Holder, is the culmination of an investigation launched in February following allegations by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler. In a scathing blog post, Fowler alleged that she had been the victim of repeated sexual harassment, and that Uber had refused to remove the man in question due to his strong performance record.

"The Uber board met today with Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran," said an Uber board spokesperson. "The board unanimously voted to adopt all the recommendations of the Holder Report. The recommendations will be released to the employees on Tuesday."

A separate internal investigation, which looked at 215 cases of sexual harassment, bullying and unprofessional behaviour, resulted in the firing of 20 employees last week, including senior executives.

Holder's report, which is partly based on those 215 cases, is likely to include reforms to Uber's workplace culture, but may even suggest personnel changes. It is currently unclear whether Travis Kalanick is secure in his position as CEO, and the board may consider asking him to take a leave of absence, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal today.

The report also claims that Emil Michael, Uber's long-serving chief business officer is contemplating leaving the company as a result of the report. Recode reports that this is not accurate, but that the executive is under pressure from the board to resign.Uber has declined to comment to several publications about Michael's future.

07/06/2017: Uber has fired 20 employees after an internal review prompted by accusations of endemic sexism at the ride-hailing firm.

The widespread investigation, the findings of which were delayed more than a month, examined sexual harassment, bullying, unprofessional behaviour and more, with Uber revealing the terminations at a staff meeting in its San Francisco headquarters, according to aNew York Timesreport yesterday.

An anonymous employee told the publication that the firings are because of an internal investigation that occurred in the last few months, and that some of those who were fired were senior executives, although the company did not name those it sacked.

An Uber spokesperson told IT Pro: "All reported incidents to date have been investigated, and where they were corroborated we have taken swift, decisive action.

"We have been doing this consistently and with rigour for the past few months and will continue to do so as issues are raised. This is not a one time activity".

Uber investigated a total of 215 claims, which included discrimination, sexual harassment, unprofessional behaviour, bullying, harassment, retaliation and physical security. The majority of the claims were raised by team members located in San Francisco, although claims were raised in offices all over the world.

The spokesperson added: "Contrary to some reports, the 215 claims were not all related to sexual harassment, nor were the 20 terminations. They fell into one of the categories listed above."

Former Uber engineer Susan Fowler accused her previous employer of various sexism allegations in a blog post in February, which prompted a separate, external, review of the ride-hailing firm's culture, the results of which were expected towards the end of May, but are now expected to land next week.

Fowler accuseda more senior member of staff of propositioning her for sex and, when she asked a director what needed to be done about the dwindling number of women in the organisation, he allegedly said "that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers".

21/04/2017:Uber delays sexism report until next month

Uber's board of directors has granted an extension for a review investigating sexual harassment claims.

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrn are leading the review into Uber's corporate culture, sparked by accusations of sexism from former employee, engineer Susan Fowler.

The board said in a statement that it had extended the review to "leave no stone unturned" and now expected a report by the end of May, after Holder failed to get the required interviews with executives key to the investigation.

The report had previously been expected by the end of this month.

"When Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrn began their review, we told them that they would have all the support and time necessary to conduct an intensive, thorough review of Uber's workplace and culture," board member Arianna Huffington said in a written statement.

"Eric and Tammy have asked us for more time to complete their assessment, which includes information received from hundreds of employees through interviews and anonymous online focus groups and reflects the global scale of the company's operations."

23/02/2017:Uber tells fleeing users it is "deeply hurting"

Amid growing backlash against practices at Uber, the company has attempted to smooth over relations with users by writing to those trying to abandon the service.

Uber has had a turbulent month, which began with accusations that the company took advantage of airport strikes during protests against President Donald Trump's travel ban on Muslim-majority countries. Now the resulting #DeleteUber campaign has been bolstered by a former Uber engineer's allegations of sexual harassment and systemic discrimination within the company.

Susan Fowler alleged that her manager propositioned her, and that HR fobbed off her reports of sexism. Uber CEO TravisKalanick described the content of the claims as "abhorrent" and has ordered a full review of Uber's diversity and culture in light of Fowler's claims.

Now, those deleting their Uber accounts receive a formal message outlining the company's desire to change, also reminding them they cannot recover their accounts once they are deleted.

"Everyone at Uber is deeply hurting after reading Susan Fowler's blog post," the letter states, which has since been shared on Twitter. "We believe in creating a workplace where a deep sense of justice underpins everything we do and it's everyone's number one priority to create change in the coming months and years."

The message appears to be a last ditch attempt to change the minds of those seeking to ditch Uber, but makes no attempt to force users to stay with the service.

Uber recently committed to a full internal review of Fowler's allegations, which claim she faced discrimination and sexual harassment from a senior manager, an employee who Uber apparently refused to reprimand because of his "stellar performance reviews".

Former US Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber board member Arianna Huffington will oversee Uber's investigation into the claims, and Uber has also promised to deliver its first diversity report in the coming months.

Uber has stated to IT Pro that messages were only sent to a small number of US customers, and that the letter has since been removed.

21/02/2017:Uber hires ex-Attorney General to probe sexism claims

Uber has enlisted the help of a former US Attorney General to investigate claims of sexism made against the company by a former employee.

Eric Holder, who held the office under President Barack Obama, will conduct a review of the complaints made by Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer who alleged she had been the victim of sexual harassment by her manager, amid a string of accusations painting a picture of widespread sexism at the taxi app firm.

Claims range from female engineers being denied leather jackets because there weren't enough engineers to justify the spend, to her request to move teams being denied because a manager wanted to keep women on his team.

Holder, who Airbnb hired last year to help create new anti-discrimination policies for its online room sharing platform, will be joined by Tammy Albarran, his partner at Covington & Burling law firm, according to an internal staff memo by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, seen by Reuters.

"Every Uber employee should be proud of the culture we have and what we will build together over time," said Kalanick in the memo. "It is my number one priority that we come through this a better organisation, where we live our values and fight for and support those who experience injustice."

Uber board member Arianna Huffington, chief human resources officer Liane Hornsey, and associate general counsel Angela Padilla will also help with the investigation, which will additionally assess diversity and culture at Uber.

Kalanick also revealed to staff that Uber will release its first diversity report within the next few months. The memo highlighted that 15.1% of employees at Uber are women, compared to the 18% at Google, 17% at Facebook, and 10% at Twitter.

In her blog post revealing the allegations, Fowler maintains that when she left Uber in December 2016, just 3% of 150 engineers in her division were female.

Kalanick has called the content of the allegations "abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in".

20/02/2017:Ex-Uber engineer accuses firm of systemic sexism

Uber has been accused of systemic sexism by a former employee, who alleged that sexual harassment claims were repeatedly buried by the company's human resources department.

The claims were made by ex-Uber engineer Susan Fowler, who worked in the company's site reliability engineering department from November 2015 to December 2016. She published a blog post on Sunday detailing a laundry list of troubling accusations against the company.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick described the content of the claims as "abhorrent" and has ordered an urgent investigation.

One of Fowler's main claims centres around her first manager, who allegedly propositioned Fowler on her first day of working on his team. According to Fowler, when she reported him to HR for sexual harassment, she was told that it was his first offence.

That, combined with the fact that he "had stellar performance reviews from his superiors", meant that no action was taken against him, Fowler said. Instead, Fowler was forced to either switch to a team that she was less suited to or to stay on the team and accept that the manager in question would likely give her a poor performance review.

"One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn't be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been 'given an option'. I tried to escalate the situation but got nowhere with either HR or with my own management chain," she wrote.

However, after talking with female colleagues, Fowler said she discovered that multiple women had lodged HR complaints against this manager, all of whom were told that he'd never had any incidents in the past.

"It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being 'his first offense', and it certainly wasn't his last," she wrote. "The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done."

This was far from the only example of workplace sexism detailed by Fowler. For instance, after promising leather jackets for all employees in the division, Uber reportedly informed female staff that they would not be receiving any because "there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order".

Eventually, the situation got so bad that Fowler decided to transfer to a different engineering organisation within Uber, but despite saying she met all the relevant criteria and having a "perfect performance score", she found her transfer blocked.

Senior managers within the company said that her transfer was denied due to "undocumented performance problems", but Fowler claims the real reason is that having a female engineer on the team made her manager look good.

In order to keep her on the team, she said, one of her performance reviews was retroactively downgraded - which meant that she was also no longer eligible for an Uber-sponsored position on a Stanford computer science program she was enrolled in.

After keeping extensive records of sexist incidents and filing numerous reports with the company's HR department, Fowler claims she was summoned to a meeting. "The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making, and that if I had ever considered that I might be the problem," Fowler wrote.

Uber's HR representative also allegedly said that "certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so [she] shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering".

"Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and [telling] me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR," said Fowler.

Following this meeting, Fowler claims that her manager threatened to fire her if she continued reporting incidents of sexism to HR. She said that nothing was done about this threat, despite saying she then told HR and Uber's CTO, who apparently admitted that it was illegal. She claims the lack of action was once again due to the manager in question being "a high performer".

She added: "When I joined Uber, the organization [division] I was part of was over 25% women," she said. "By the time I was trying to transfer... this number had dropped down to less than 6%." On her last day, she said 3% of more than 150 engineers in her division were women.

Multiple women in Silicon Valley and beyond have taken to Twitter and the comments section of Fowler's blog to show their support and to share similar stories.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has expressed his horror at the accusations, and promised a complete investigation into the issue. "I have just read Susan Fowler's blog," he said in a statement sent toIT Pro. "What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in."

"It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace FOR EVERYONE and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber - and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired."

Amy Douthwaite, senior associate at Kemp Little Employment, told IT Prothe claims undermine schemes aimed at bringing more women into tech, saying: "Women are notoriously under-represented in the tech sector in the UK, leading to a number of recent initiatives to encourage more women into the sector; these sorts of headlines are unlikely to help change this."

She added: "As these allegations have been so public, this may lead to employees in the UK coming forward with similar complaints, which could in turn lead to grievances and Employment Tribunal claims if they are not resolved. Of course, any allegation has to be substantiated to be upheld, but evidence of the mistreatment of other employees could be used to support arguments of an ingrained cultural problem at Uber in claims by other similarly affected employees."

The ride-sharing king is dead; long live London's black cab. Transport for London's (TfL) decision to not renew Uber's licence to operate in the city spells the end of smartphone ride-hailing after a boozy night for Londoners.

As someone who has seen Uber as a metaphorical life-saver after getting trapped at the far reaches of the London's Central line after a slightly over-exuberant evening, I'm not particularly happy at TfL's decision.

In fact, I feel it marks a significant step backwards in the evolution of London's transport and the technology behind it.

While I came late to Uber compared to others, I soon realised that it not only offers a cheaper alternative to London's iconic black cabs, but it makes clever use of the technology we all carry around in our pockets.

Unlike attempting to catch a taxi after the Tube is shut, forced to queue with intoxicated people hell-bent on singing 'Hey Jude' while barging their way to the nearest taxi, I can simply hail a ride from a user-friendly app that shows me near enough exactly where my metal chariot awaits and how much it will cost to get me home.

And once I'm in my Uber ride, I can track the progress to my final destination, and through the use of Spotify integration allow the driver to sample 'Roland's Wake Up' playlist.

To my mind, Uber represented the foundations for London to become a proper smart city, by presenting an amalgamation of technology that many have promised will streamline our lives but have often failed to deliver. And now TfL has killed it for me and some 3.5 million fellow users.

Of course, if I remove my rose-tinted glasses, Uber has definitely been a company awash with questionable practices, from how it treats its drivers to divorcing itself from being responsible for its users and attempting to hide from regulatory probes.

The proliferation of Uber drivers in London has also had a negative effect on traditional taxi drivers, who have bemoaned that the ride-sharing service undermines their extensive training and knowledge.

Then we have Travis Kalanick, a now ousted chief executive who appeared to oversee a culture of sexism and bullying. In many ways, TfL's branding of Uber being unfit for purpose and having a "a lack of corporate responsibility" is pretty accurate.

Yet despite these flaws Uber has used technology in a forward-thinking fashion; whether deliberately or not, it has essentially democratised transport for nearly everybody in London in the same fashion as the Underground once did.

With Uber, you simply put your destination into the app and a nearby driver comes to pick you up, there's no "I'm not going south of the river" black cab driver quips to deal with.

People from ethnic minorities have pointed out that they are guaranteed to get a ride in Uber, as opposed to normal taxi services, which some have claimed are more hostile to minorities and not as likely to accept their fares.

Other people have commented that the lack of policing on other public transport has seen them use Uber to feel safe when travelling around London.

And then there's the work opportunities Uber's digital gig-economy service has facilitated. Some 40,000 licensed drivers rely on Uber to make a living, and while the company isn't exactly fair in the way it supports its drivers, it still presents a means to make money in a world where getting and keeping work is increasingly a challenge.

TfL is correct in saying that Uber needs to get its house in order, having basked in the glow of a laissez-fair approach to regulation over the past five years or so. But I think it's a little rich for a public sector authority to take that view when the government itself still allows the existence of zero-hour contracts and other questionable practices among major companies.

If Uber can't appeal the decision then TfL will have made it tough for a whole range of people and could ruin the livelihood of Uber drivers, though it will make things easier for black cab drivers.

But what resonates with me from a tech perspective is how TfL's decision effectively reverses innovation in London's transport, potentially blocking a service that encouraged healthy competition and arguably had an overall benefit for Londoners.

I believe TfL could have done more at the early stages of Uber's introduction in the capital to ensure it played by the rules, and it still could work closely with Uber to bring the ride-hailing service into the fold without curtailing the transport evolution and competition it offers.

There are still Uber-esque companies out there like mytaxi (formerly Hailo), but to my mind, TfL's decision is close to proclaiming that London's transport is closed to tech innovation, leaving the capital's residents to put up with packed Tubes, busy buses, and air-polluting diesel taxis.

If Uber really does leave London, I feel the capital's potential to be a forward-thinking smart city follows it on the road out.

Transport for London (TfL) has issued a statement claiming it won't issue Uber with a private hire operator licence.

Uber's current licence is set to expire on 30 September. TfL said it has concluded that Uber "is not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator licence".

In a statement posted to Twitter, TfL said that Uber's approach and conduct "demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility". It goes on to list four points, including Uber's failure to report serious criminal offences, its approach to medical certificates and its approach to how Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks are obtained.

The last point notes Uber's use of the Greyball software in London, which TfL claims can be used to block regulatory bodies from gaining full access to the Uber app, and therefore prevent officials from undertaking law enforcement duties.

The news will come as a huge blow to Uber, which has been beset by problems over the past few months. Those seemed to culminate in June, with the resignation of its founder Travis Kalanick, although the decision by a major city to strip Uber of its licence mark a new lowpoint for the ride sharing company.

Uber has 21 days to appeal, and the service will be able to continue until that appeal process has been exhausted.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said in a statement: "I fully support TfL's decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners' safety and security."

Uber has responded by saying it will "immediately challenge" TfL's decision in the courts.

"By wanting to ban our app from the captial, TfL and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice," Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, wrote in a statement. "If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport."

Elvidge goes on to claim that Uber has "always followed" TfL rules on reporting serious incidents, and that an independent review from the company has found that the Greyball software "has never been used [or] considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL".

"This ban would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers," the statement reads.

In July, Italian authorities banned Uber from advertising and operating in the country due to what was deemed "unfair competition" to taxi services. That decision was quickly overturned by an Italian court, however, after Uber appealed the decision. In response, the Italian government pledged to introduce clearer rules for competition between taxis and ride-sharing services before the end of the year.

Also in July, a report by head of the RSA thinktank, Matthew Taylor, called for a new category of "dependent contractors" to be created, in response to the business models of firms such as Uber and Deliveroo.

"There are too many people at work who are treated like cogs in a machine rather than being human beings, and there are too many people who don't see a route from their current job to progress and earn more and do better," Taylor told the BBC at the time.

Uber's new CEO is planning to take the taxi-hailing app public within three years.

Dara Khosrowshahi takes the wheel as CEO at Uber next week, but met with staff at the beleaguered company yesterday. According to a report in the Financial Times, one aspect of his plans for Uber is to take it public within 18 to 36 months.

Former CEO Travis Kalanick has previously said he was against going public, telling CNBC: "I'm going to make sure it happens as late as possible."

Despite that, Uber has long sat atop analysts and bankers' lists of expected IPOs, particularly after Kalanick's departure.

Before such a move, Khosrowshahi said Uber needs to get its business in shape and refocus on "paying the bills", the FT report said. Uber has yet to actually pull a profit, largely because of the high costs of its expansion and its "big shots" such as investment into flying cars.

He also pledged to change corporate culture the reason his predecessor was pushed out of the company. "This company has to change," Khosrowshahi reportedly said. "What got us here is not what's going to get us to the next level."

30/08/2017: Khosrowshahi says he's 'scared' about new role as Uber CEO

Former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said he is "scared" about taking on the role as Uber's new boss, in a memo announcing his official appointment to employees.

"This has been one of the toughest decisions of my life," said Khosrowshahi, in a memo obtained by Recode. "I've had the privilege to run Expedia for 12+ years now, and most of you who have been on this journey with me know it has not been easy going."

However, he added that he was worried by the idea of moving out of his comfort zone: "I have to tell you I am scared. I've been here at Expedia for so long that I've forgotten what life is like outside this place. But the times of greatest learning for me have been when I've been through big changes, or taken on new roles."

Khosrowshahi was appointed to the role by Uber's executive board on Sunday, following the dismissal of co-founder and long-term CEO Travis Kalanick. It is thought he has since been negotiating his contract, which could worth as much as $200 million, according to figures unearthed by Business Insider.

In a joint statement, the board reiterated that Khosrowshahi had received unanimous support, and welcomed him to the role.

"We're really fortunate to gain a leader with Dara's experience, talent and vision," said the statement, which included Arianna Huffington, considered to be one of the main proponents of change at the company. "The board and executive leadership team are confident that Dara is the best person to lead Uber into the future building world-class products, transforming cities, and adding value to the lives of drivers and riders around the world, while continuously improving our culture and making Uber the best place to work."

One of his first duties will be to formally greet Uber employees at a meeting today at the company's San Francisco headquarters.

Travis Kalanick also congratulated the new CEO in a statement yesterday: "Casting a vote for the new chief executive was a big moment for me and I couldn't be happier to pass the torch to such an inspiring leader."

Uber will likely see the appointment as a significant step towards cleaning up the company's image, which has been tarred over the past year by allegations of systemic sexism and anti-competitive practices.

29/08/2017: Ex-Expedia chief takes on Uber CEO vacancy

Uber has announced the appointment of ex-Expedia boss Dara Khosrowshahi as its new CEO, replacing Travis Kalanick who resigned from the company last year amid reports of a corporate culture rife with sexism and harassment.

Dara Khosrowshahi has been the chief executive of Expedia since 2005. Before this, he worked at a number of other companies also led by Expedia chairman Barry Diller, including USA Networks and IAC Travel, which purchased Expedia in 2005. Khosrowshahi has also sat on the board of the New York Times since 2015.

Diller told Expedia's staff of Khosrowshahi's plans to accept the role in a memo. "Nothing has yet been finalised, but having extensively discussed this with Dara, I believe it is his intention to accept," he said according to the BBC.

Although rumours suggested HP chief executive Meg Whitman or Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric, could take up the demanding role, Immelt announced he wouldn't be joining the taxi firm in a tweet on Sunday.

"I have decided not to pursue a leadership position at Uber. I have immense respect for the company & founders - Travis, Garrett and Ryan," he wrote on the social network. Although he didn't go into more detail about why he wouldn't be taking up the role, the New York Times speculated Immelt didn't get enough votes from the Uber board.

Whitman said last week on Twitter she hadn't even considered leaving her role: "We have a lot of work still to do at HPE."

Neither Khosrowshahi nor Uber have commented on the appointment.

28/07/2017: Who will replace Travis Kalanick at Uber?

After increasing pressure from investors, Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from the company last June. Kalanick faced criticism after numerous scandals took place over the last few months involving claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Kalanick has held the position of CEO since he co-founded Uber back in 2009; it's now valued at nearly $70 billion. Despite this, Uber was plagued with problems and was subject to numerous reviews, especially after ex-employee Susan Fowler wrote a blog post about her experiences of sexual harassment at the company.

Now, the ride-hailing app is on the search for someone to take Kalanick's place and steer it onto the right course. It's hoping to name a CEO by early September which means the next few weeks will be awash with rumours as to who that person might be. Since Kalanick still owns the majority of Uber, it would also make sense that a future CEO would get along well with him too.

Who could the next CEO of Uber be?

Meg Whitman, HPE CEO

There were rumours that Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE, was being considered for the position. Whitman recently stepped off the board of directors of HP Inc which fuelled rumours that she might make the move to Uber. As reported by Bloomberg, the company has drawn up a shortlist of six candidates, one of which is Whitman. According to two sources known to the publication, the HPE CEO has been meeting the firm's leadership over recent weeks too.

Despite this, Whitman took to Twitter yesterday to say that she wasn't going to leave HPE anytime soon. She said that she doesn't normally comment on rumours but the speculation of her becoming Uber's CEO had become a "distraction".

Whitman said: "I am fully committed to HPE and plan to remain the company's CEO."

In a following tweet she made this even clearer: "We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere. Uber's CEO will not be Meg Whitman."

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric outgoing CEO

Jeffrey Immelt is set to leave General Electric and it has been suggested that he may take the steering wheel of the ride-hailing app. Bloomberg sources told the publication that he is on the shortlist too.

Immelt is leaving GE after spending 16 years at the company and his departure date is set to be on 31 December 2017, although his successor John Flannery will take over at the start of August. This may mean that he has started looking for a new role which makes him a potential candidate.

Marissa Mayer, ex-Yahoo CEO

Mayer was Yahoo's CEO before Verizon completed its acquisition of the company. She left as a result of this acquisition, receiving a $186 million payout in the process, and now is reportedly looking for her next role at a company as the CEO.

Mayer told Business Insider on 19 July that she definitely wants a new CEO role and wouldn't comment on whether she would like to take the helm of Uber. She did say, however, that Uber hadn't reached out to ask her about filling the position.

Mayer has defended Travis Kalanick in the past, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, stating that Kalanick was unaware of the toxic culture at the company because it had grown so fast. She said: "I count Travis as one of my friends. I think he's a phenomenal leader; Uber is ridiculously interesting."

Uber is the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) into potential bribery offences.

The DoJ has started the preliminary process of opening an official investigation into allegations that managers at the embattled tech company breached the Foreign Corrupt Practises Act US legislation which prohibits companies from bribing foreign government officials for business reasons it was revealed by the Wall Street Journal.

The company has confirmed to IT Pro that it will be fully co-operating with the DoJ in its investigation.

It is currently unknown which specific country or countries the investigation is focused on, but it may be related to claims that Uber may have used bribery to obtain the medical records of a Delhi woman who was raped by an Uber driver in 2014. The company hired a law firm earlier this year to mount an investigation into these claims.

Uber has been plagued by scandals and setbacks for most of this year; accusations of systemic sexism from a female former engineer kicked off a chain reaction which saw the company shed numerous executives, including founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick.

The top spot has now been accepted by Expedia's former CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who assumes command at a time when the company is embroiled in a number of serious legal cases and investigations, many centering around its tumultuous relationship with regulatory authorities and law enforcement.

Uber is still under investigation by the DoJ over its use of 'Greyball' software, which helped it to identify and avoid government officials who may have been attempting to investigate it. The company is also fending off claims from Google-owned Waymo that former Waymo employee Anthony Levandowski stole trade secrets and research when he left to join Uber.

Uber is, to put it mildly, a company with image problems. At the risk of making a horrendously unwieldy sentence, over the past few years the company has almost been banned from the iPhone, been accused of stealing driverless technology, made their drivers listen to anti-union propaganda, used software to dodge city officials, had its CEO caught on video shouting at one of his drivers and had to own up to his systemic problems with sexism. And breathe.

That's actually only just scratching the surface. Under the weight of this much scandal, it was unsurprising that CEO Travis Kalanick ended up stepping down earlier this year.

Those left behind have been moving fast to pick up the pieces, trying to rebuild the company's reputation among those who appreciate the convenience of an Uber but would prefer to keep their hands clean. Of all the accusations, it's the sexism charge that stuck the most, which perhaps unfairly leaves the timing of Uber's latest charitable donation looking more like a thinly veiled PR move than a genuine desire to help.

The company has pledged $1.2 million as a grant to Girls Who Code a non-profit organisation with the laudable aim of reducing the horrendous gender pay gap in the technology sector. New chief brand officer Bozoma Saint John who recently made Apple events much less fun by leaving will be joining Girls Who Code's board of directors as part of the partnership.

"I've said it quite a bit, but I believe in representation and that it matters," Saint John told TechCrunch. "And there's no better time than right now to talk about women in tech and women in these very specific ladders. We obviously want more leadership and want more women in tech, so we need to make sure the pipeline is strong."

It's a genuinely good cause, and a generous offer, but the company's recent history leaves the gesture feeling more than a little empty. And Uber will be more than a little irked to see that Susan J Fowler the former Uber engineer whose explosive blog post exposed the company's sexism issues was among those undermining its effectiveness at restoring Uber's image.

It comes back to that old philosophical quandary: if someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, should you be happy? That depends on who you ask: for Uber's shareholders, the answer right now is "probably not".

Uber is to face 20 years of privacy audits after settling Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaints that it deceived customers and didn't protect their personal data securely enough.

The ride-hailing firm has agreed to roll out a privacy programme that tackles any privacy risks to Uber's services, and protects people's personal information, as well as subjecting itself to a third-party audit every two years for the next 20 years.

It comes after alleged privacy breaches dating back to 2014 that led the FTC to file two complaints with the company.

"Uber failed consumers in two key ways: first by misrepresenting the extent to which it monitored its employees' access to personal information about users and drivers, and second by misrepresenting that it took reasonable steps to secure that data," said the FTC's acting chairman, Maureen Ohlhausen.

The FTC claims Uber allowed its employees to access personal customer and driver records after it decided to stop using a self-developed solution that monitored employee access to its customers' data. The monitoring platform was only in operation for less than a year and after it terminated the use, it didn't introduce any other process to monitor access.

Although at the time, Uber said its data was securely stored in its database, it has since transpired this wasn't the case and it actually failed to provide any kind of system that prevented unauthorised access to customers' confidential information.

Responding to media reports that Uber employees were improperly accessing customer data, Uber issued a statement in November 2014 saying a "strict policy" forbade such access to customer and driver information except for certain business purposes, and that their access would be closely monitored.

The following month it developed an automated system to monitor employee access to customer data, but the FTC claimed it stopped using this system less than a year later, and rarely monitored access for nine months afterwards.

Meanwhile, the FTC also claimed that while Uber said people's data was "securely stored within our databases", its security measures did not prevent unauthorised access to databases stored in Amazon Web Services' cloud. That allegedly enabled an intruder to steal 100,000 names and driver's license numbers from Uber's database in May 2014.

"This case shows that, even if you're a fast growing company, you can't leave consumers behind: you must honour your privacy and security promises," Ohlhausen said.

Uber has refunded journeys made during Saturday night's London terror attack, but has come under fire from some users for allegedly charging more.

The London Bridge terror attack that occurred at around 10pm killed seven people and left 48 injured, and people in the vicinity tried to escape the area by using taxis, including Uber.

Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, said: "Our hearts go out to everybody affected by yet another horrific attack on our city. We'd like to thank all the drivers who helped tens of thousands of Londoners get home safely last night.

"As soon as we heard about the incident we immediately suspended dynamic pricing all around the area of the attacks - and shortly afterwards across the whole of central London - just as we did following the attacks in Manchester and Westminster.

We are also ensuring all rides from around the affected area were free of charge. Our team is also working with the Metropolitan Police to help them get any footage from drivers who were in the area at the time."

However, some people took to Twitter to question Uber's reported claim that it stopped charging its standard surge pricing at 10.50pm, with one claiming that the company continued to charge users past midnight.

"Why are [Uber] drivers charging up to 10x rather than helping those in need?" said another Twitter user.

Another, @isobelvandyke, claimed that their Uber driver "deliberately drove [her] through central London" near the affected area because she was unwilling to pay a fee to avoid the area.

Uber calls its pattern of increased fees 'dynamic pricing', hiking up fares when there are more passengers requesting taxis than there are Uber drivers available. Following the attack in Manchester nearly two weeks ago, Uber offered free rides to take people away from the area.

IT Pro has contacted Uber for comment.

Uber's licence to operate in London has been renewed for only four months as transport authorities consider whether to grant it a five-year licence.

Black cab drivers and unions are asking Transport for London (TfL) to reject the application unless Uber make changes to its operations and working practices.

The Licensed Taxis Drivers Association (LTDA) claimed that the decision to grant Uber a 12-week licence was "sneaked out on Friday afternoon just hours before the bank holiday weekend. This was done without giving interested parties a chance to formally respond to the decision".

Uber is not a "fit and proper operator", claimed the LTDA, which alleged that Uber drivers are untrained and unsafe, passengers are unsafe in Uber vehicles, Uber is a tax-dodging firm, and that Uber exploits drivers as they do not receive sick pay, holiday, pensions or minimum wage.

Steve McNamara, the general secretary of the LTDA, said: "Uber has had five years to prove that it is a fit and proper operator and it still can't. Whilst the Mayor and TfL have finally recognised that they have serious questions to answer, they should have taken action today to protect Londoners from a company that puts profit ahead of passengers' safety. If Uber has failed to do this in the last five years, they won't do it in the next 12 weeks."

The company was granted a five-year licence in 2012, which is set to expire on 30 May.

A TfL spokesperson told the Guardian that: "Uber London Limited has been granted a four-month private hire operator licence. This will allow us to conclude our consideration of a five-year licence."

TfL is considering changing fees for private hire operators so that the fee correlates to the number of vehicles the operator has, with a flat per-vehicle fee for operators with more than 1,000 vehicles.

TfL stated in a letter to private hire operators: "We are considering, on a case by case basis, whether private hire operator licences of a shorter duration should be issued, until the outcome of the consultation process is known and any changes are implemented." The consultation is set to close on 16 June.

An Uber spokesperson said: "Millions of Londoners rely on Uber to get a reliable ride at the touch of a button and thousands of licensed drivers make money through our app. We look forward to continuing to help keep London moving."

In April, Uber was granted the right to appeal an employment tribunal ruling that drivers should have the same benefits as employees. A two-day hearing is set for 27 September.

The US Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Uber's use of its so-called 'Greyball' software tool that allowed drivers to avoid government authorities trying to clamp down on its operation, according to Reuters.

The software, first revealed by the New York Times in March, is able to pool credit card information, social media profiles and geolocation data to identify government officials, and then force through a fake version of the app when they tried to book a ride.

'Greyballing' was extensively used in cities where Uber services were either restricted or banned outright, according to the report. Uber has since banned the use of the software, although it has stated its purpose was to prevent fraud and safeguard employees, rather than evade regulators.

The apparent criminal probe would be the latest in a string of legal challenges against the company, as it struggles to deal with allegations that it uses illegal monitoring practices against other firms, and claims of sexism and sexual harassment.

Although Uber declined to comment on the reports, however it did attach a copy of a letter sent from its lawyers to authorities in Portland. In the letter, dated 21 April, Uber lawyers argue that Greyballing was used "exceeding sparingly in the City of Portland", and that it the software has not been deployed since 2015.

The letter also states that Uber does not recognise the description of the software provided by the New York Times article, and that "the term and the technology are used in a host of ways that we do not believe trigger the concerns raised by the city".

The current nature and scope of the potential investigation remains unclear, and it is uncertain if any individual will be charged. However the ride-hailing firm has received a subpoena from a Northern California grand jury, seeking documents relating to the use of the software, according to Reuters. If true, this would confirm that a criminal investigation has started.

09/03/2017: Uber drops cop-stopping 'Greyball' tool

Uber has promised to stop using its 'Greyball' tool to dodge police, after it was revealed that the company was using Big Data to fool regulators with dummy vehicles.

The tool uses information such as credit card data, social media profiles and geolocation tags to identify law enforcement officials, who would then be presented with a fake version of the app. Bookings would be picked up by non-existent virtual cars and if a real driver picked one up by accident, the booking would be automatically cancelled.

The issue was exposed in a New York Times report, which also revealed that 'Greyballing' was used to avoid regulators and police in cities where Uber was restricted or outright banned.

According to the company, Greyballing has other applications. "It's been used for many purposes," Uber CSO Joe Sullivan wrote in a blog post; "for example: the testing of new features by employees; marketing promotions; fraud prevention; to protect our partners from physical harm; and to deter riders using the app in violation of our terms of service."

However, Sullivan also pledged to address concerns that Uber is using its technical tools to skirt the law. "We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date," he said. "In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward."

These revelations are just the latest in what has proven to be a scandal-ridden year for the ride-sharing company. It was criticised heavily for its role in Trump's travel ban, has faced allegations of endemic sexism and discrimination, and is in the middle of fighting off a lawsuit from self-driving car firm Waymo.

Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick was also caught on film having an argument with one of the company's drivers, after which he was forced to issue a public apology. The firm is also currently on the hunt for a COO to help it "write the next chapter".

Flying taxis that take you around cities at the press of a button sounds like the far flung future - or at least like the setting of The Fifth Element.

But Uber wants to make that vision reality much sooner - by 2020, in fact. The ride-hailing firm aims to demonstrate its airborne cabs, which people can order to take them around cities - during the 2020 World Expo in Dubai.

Revealing its plans during its inaugural Elevate summit yesterday, Uber also unveiled a series of partnerships known as the Elevate initiative with real estate companies, aircraft manufacturers, electric vehicle manufacturers and two cities.

The first partner cities are Dallas-Fort Worth and Dubai. Dallas-Fort Worth is looking to be the first metropolitan area in the US to explore a flying car pilot and Uber also recently entered into a partnership with the Dubai Road and Transport Authority, which will be funding studies for demand modelling in the region to better understand pricing and network optimisation.

In both of these cities, Uber said it needs to develop infrastructure partnerships with local real estate companies in order to construct vertiports for a future Uber Elevate Network. The company has already partnered with Hillwood Properties in Dallas-Fort Worth and is looking to partner with several real estate companies in Dubai in order to do this.

Uber also partnered with aircraft manufacturers who are developing electric VTOL vehicles such as Aurora Flight Sciences, Pipistrel Aircraft, Embraer, Mooney and Bell Helicopter. The company also needs to develop a VTOL charger for the Uber Elevate Network so has partnered with ChargePoint for this to happen.

Chief Product Officer at Uber Jeff Holden said: "What started as a simple question 'why can't I push a button and get a ride?' has turned, for Uber, into a passionate pursuit of the pinnacle of urban mobility - the reduction of congestion and pollution from transportation, giving people their time back, freeing up real estate dedicated to parking and providing access to mobility in all corners of a city. Urban Aviation is a natural next step for Uber in this pursuit, which is why we are working to make push a button, get a flight a reality."

The event will prove a welcome relief to the embattled company from headlines about its investigation into claims of sexism at the firm, breaking Apple's privacy rules, and court battles.

Pictures courtesy of Uber

08/02/2017:Uber hires NASA expert to research flying car

Uber has appointed ex-NASA executive Mark Moore as director of engineering for aviation in its Elevate division - the department that is trying to develop a flying taxi.

It's hoped Moore can provide the knowledge necessary to make Uber's dream a reality and transport the automated cars it's researching from the road up into the skies.

Uber released a whitepaper back in October explaining its decision to research drone vehicles, which will feature vertical take-off and landing technology to ensure they can launch from almost anywhere.

It discussed the benefits of on-demand urban air transportation, explaining it will enable commuters to get to their place of work in minutes rather than hours.

"Imagine traveling from San Francisco's Marina to work in downtown San Jose a drive that would normally occupy the better part of two hoursin only 15 minutes," the company said. "What if you could save nearly four hours round-trip between So Paulo's city center and the suburbs in Campinas?"

The white paper included Moore as one of the contributors to its research, so it's not surprising he decided to make the jump to the on-demand taxi service when they realised his expertise in the field. In fact, his work on a similar project for NASA made him perfect to fill the vacancy at Uber's flying car division.

Moore said the main problem with flying cars is that battery technology hasn't developed far enough to provide the vehicles with the power they need to stay in the air for prolonged periods of time.

Uber is working with Volvo and Daimler for its road-based automated car technology, but it's not clear if it'll be working with other partners for its air vehicles.

Image credit: Uber

25/04/2017: Uber has been hit by another blow this week, as a former Lyft driver has filed a complaint against the company alleging it used bespoke software to spy on rivals' drivers, an action that would violate US state privacy laws.

The lawsuit claims that a secret internal program known as 'Hell' was used to track drivers and build a database of those employees that worked for both Uber and Lyft. This data would then be used to prioritise sending work to those employees who used both services, in an effort to tempt drivers away from using Lyft.

By using Hell spyware, "Uber employees, contractors, and/or agents were able to access the location of up to eight Lyft drivers at one time and obtain their unique Lyft ID. Each Lyft ID is unique, akin to a social security number, which allowed Uber to track Lyft drivers' locations over time", the filing to the US District Court for the Northern District of California reads.

"Uber was looking for overlap between the location data so that it could target drivers working for both platforms in order to improve the Uber platform and harm the Lyft platform," the complaint states.

Uber's Hell program was used "millions of times" between 2014 and 2016, according to the complaint. As a result, Lyft reportedly suffered from a lack of drivers, preventing the company from operating a cheap service, and leaving customers with inflated wait times.

The former Lyft employee argues that this represents "unlawful invasion of privacy and interception of electronic communications and images in violation of the Federal Wiretap Act".

The suit states that around 315,000 drivers were working for Lyft in 2016, 60% of whom had also worked for Uber. The remainder, about 126,000 drivers, worked exclusively for Lyft and could be considered an entire class of plaintiff, the filing argues.

The Hell program, first surfaced by the Information on 12 April, was initially dismissed by Uber, which refuted claims it prioritised drivers. However, since then the company has been silent.

This is not the first time Uber has been accused of misusing tracking software. Uber allegedly violated data protection laws when it apparently used software known as "Heaven View" to track the positions of "high profile politicians, celebrities, and even personal acquaintances of Uber employees, including ex-boyfriends/girlfriends and ex-spouses", according to a lawsuit last year.

Meanwhile, Uber made use of a tool known as "Greyball", the New York Times revealed last month, to track law enforcement and officials trying to clamp down on Uber services. As the company was operating in cities such as Boston and Portland without state permission, the program allowed Uber to avoid sting operations trying to shut down its service.

The NYT this week reported that Apple threatened to kick Uber's app off iOS for violating Apple privacy rules by using tracking software to stop fraud in China.

IT Pro has approached both Uber and Lyft for comment, but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.

13/04/2017: Uber reportedly targeted Lyft drivers with "Hell" program

In an effort to remain at the top of the ride-hailing pyramid, Uber reportedly developed a program that exploited its major competitor, Lyft.

A report by The Information claimed the secretive software-based program, referred to as "Hell," kept tabs on Lyft drivers between 2014 and 2016, before Uber ended it sometime in 2016. The devilish name was allegedly given to contrast the previous "God View" and "Heaven" programs, which allowed Uber to internally track its own drivers and employees.

A small group of data scientists and top Uber executives, including CEO Travis Kalanick, initially developed Hell by creating fake rider accounts for Lyft, it's alleged. The location of these accounts were then edited, allowing those behind the program to see where Lyft vehicles were throughout an entire city.

The report suggests the employees were also able to determine which drivers were "double-apping," or driving for both Lyft and Uber. Uber supposedly obtained this information upon realising that Lyft drivers had unchanging, special numbered IDs. These IDs allowed the group to continuously monitor pinpointed Lyft drivers.

The ride-hailing giant then reportedly offered incentives to these drivers, such as bonuses for reaching a target amount of rides, in the hope of getting them to ditch Lyft and drive solely for Uber.

Kalanick and his secretive group also allegedly sent more riders to double-apping drivers than to drivers who worked exclusively for Uber.

IT Pro has contacted both Uber and Lyft for comment, but hadn't received a response at the time of publication.

A Lyft spokesperson did, however, provide The Information with a statement (via TechCrunch), saying: "We are in a competitive industry. However, if true, these allegations are very concerning."

Uber is facing the prospect of a substantial increase to its operating costs in London, if changes proposed on Thursday are passed by the city's transport authority.

As part of an on-going consultation, Transport for London (TfL) is considering plans to restructure the fees that private hire companies are charged for operating within the city, ensuring that operators are paying an amount appropriate to the resources needed to regulate their services.

Under the current system, private hire companies such as Uber and Addison Lee are bundled into two tiers for a five-year license. 'Small' operators, those with no more than two vehicles, currently pay 1,488 for their license fee, while 'large' firms pay 2,826, regardless of the size of their vehicle fleet.

The proposals would scrap this in favour of a five-tier system, accounting for a range of company sizes and licensing lengths. A company such as Uber, which has over 30,000 licensed drivers in London, would be slapped with the top tier fee, paying 167,000 for a license, plus 68 per car.

TfL has said the private hire industry has seen dramatic growth, rising from 65,000 licensed drivers in 2013 to more than 117,000 today. As a result the changes are necessary to account for the "substantial increase in the cost of ensuring private hire operators fulfill their licensing obligations and in tackling illegal activity to keep passengers safe", according to TfL.

The authority estimates that the cost of enforcing regulations alone will reach 30 million over the next five years, up from an original estimate of 4 million.

Helen Chapman, general manager of Taxi & Private Hire, said: "The operator fees system is no longer fit for purpose. It is only fair that licence fees for private hire operators accurately reflect the costs of enforcement and regulating the trade. The changes to fees would also enable us to fund additional compliance officers to help crackdown on illegal and dangerous activity."

IT Pro has reached out to Uber for a statement, but has yet to hear back.

If accepted, this change would mark the latest setback Uber has faced in the UK over the past year. The company has faced multiple legal challenges, losing a case in March to prevent TfL from imposing English reading and writing standards on Uber drivers.

In a separate case, a London tribunal ruled in October that Uber drivers should be considered as employees, earning them the right to minimum wage and holiday pay. Uber has always argued its drivers are self-employeed, and has since stated it would be appealing the decision in September.

Uber has been granted the right to appeal against a ruling last year that deemed its drivers to be employees, giving them basic employment rights such as minimum wage and holiday and sickness pay.

The employment appeals tribunal has set the appeal date for 27 September, and the hearing will last for two days.

Last October's ruling, by a London employment tribunal, declared that Uber drivers cannot receive below minimum wage. Uber drivers are not paid a salary but are given a commission of each ride they provide, with the company taking a cut too.

Uber had argued that its drivers are self-employed contractors who choose when and where they work, rather than employees who work set hours from specific locations.

An Uber spokesperson said: "Almost all taxi and private hire drivers in the UK have been self-employed for decades and with Uber they have more control over what they do. Licensed drivers who use our app are totally free to choose if, when and where they drive with no shifts, minimum hours or uniforms. The vast majority of drivers who use Uber tell us they want to remain their own boss as that's the main reason why they signed up to us in the first place".

The original ruling against Uber was fierce, with the judges stating: "The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our minds faintly ridiculous. Drivers do not and cannot negotiate with passengers ... They are offered and accept trips strictly on Uber's terms."

Last year, drivers using the app in the UK made average fares of 15 per hour after Uber's service fee, Uber said. Uber has highlighted how drivers choose for how long they drive, they can take or ignore trips, they own or rent their own cars and can complete other work or jobs as it suits them.

31/10/2016: A UK employment court has ruled Uber drivers must have the same benefits of employees including holiday pay

A court has ruled that Uber drivers in the UK should be counted as employees of the company rather than contractors, meaning they must get the same benefits including holiday pay.

Additionally, the court said drivers must receive the national living wage rather than lower rates of pay as they currently do, because their wages are based upon the number of trips they make and customers they serve. They are currently paid commission on the income, rather than a salary.

Following the news, experts predict the company could receive claims from its 40,000 drivers working in the UK, arguing that they are owed employee benefits and the company should start offering other extras such as pension schemes.

Uber has consistently argued it's a technology firm, not a transport company, and that its drivers are self-employed contractors who have the benefits of choosing when and where they work, rather than employees who must work from the office at set hours.

"The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common platform' is to our minds faintly ridiculous," the judges said. "Drivers do not and cannot negotiate with passengers They are offered and accept trips strictly on Uber's terms."

The Citizens Advice Bureau carried out research around the contracting industry that revealed many workers in industries outside of the on-demand economy could be falsely classified as self-employed, which means the government is losing 314 million a year in lost tax and employer National Insurance contributions.

"We are pleased that the employment tribunal has agreed with our arguments that drivers are entitled to the most basic workers' rights, including to be paid the [national living wage] and to receive paid holiday, which were previously denied to them," Nigel Mackay from the employment team at law firm Leigh Day, which represented the drivers, said in a statement.

"This is a ground-breaking decision. It will impact not just on the thousands of Uber drivers working in this country, but on all workers in the so-called gig economy whose employers wrongly classify them as self-employed and deny them the rights to which they are entitled."

An Uber driver was imprisoned and banned from driving in Argentina for two months on Monday, marking the first offence since a ban on the ride-hailing app came into effect earlier this month.

The anonymous driver was found to have broken rules governing the misuse of public space and for practising an illegal activity, as set out in the country'sCriminal Code. Uber is banned in Argentina.

Prosecutor Martn Lapad sentenced the driver, in an "abbreviated" or speedy trial, to be jailed for two days. They will also not be able to drive any kind of vehicle for a period of two months, though the sentence can be suspended for two years if the driver, known only by the initials G.E.D.M.,commits not to use the Uber application again under any circumstance.

G.E.D.M was under investigation after offering his services as a driver through the Uber application on 22 December 2016. In the trial it was understood that the driver had earnt 4361 Argentine pesos (222)through the company Payment SRL for his services as a driver for Uber.

Lapad also found that the driver owned a B1 licence, which allows a driver to drive automobiles and trucks up to 3,500 kg of weight, but he was not allowed to transport passengers, which requires a D licence.

According to the Department of Public Prosecution, the "abbreviated" trial was used to avoid a conventional trial and resolve the process in a much more efficient way.

Lapad said: "This first conviction of an Uber driver, who has been sentenced to prison and banned from driving, shows ... the unlawfulness of the conduct of Uber drivers." He also added that if Uber drivers are under investigation, an abbreviated trial can potentially be used depending on the case.

It was declared on 10 April, one year after Uber became active in the country, that the application and use of its services is illegal. Lapad is the prosecutor in charge of the investigation surrounding Uber in Argentina, which has been blocked on all digital platforms.

Despite the ban of its service, Uber continues to recruit local drivers on its website.

Uber has faced a number of problems not only in the US but around the world. In the US, the company had to settle two lawsuits for 58 million in April 2016. In June 2016, the company was fined 800,000 by the French courts.

More recently, the ride hailing company has been plagued by a number of top level executive departures, including the self driving cars chief Sherif Marakby and president Jeff Jones.

Uber declined to comment.

18/04/2017: Uber loses vice president of global vehicle programmes

Uber's vice president of global vehicle programmes, Sherif Marakby, left his post yesterday, becoming the latest in a string of executives to leave the company.

"Self-driving is one of the most interesting challenges I've worked on in my career, and I'm grateful to have contributed to what will soon be a safer future for everyone,"Marakby said in a statement.

An Uber spokesperson added: "Sherif's deep experience and knowledge of the automotive industry have helped us tremendously in working to make self-driving cars a reality."

Marakby joined the company in April 2016 from Ford Motor, where he was a director of global electronic systems engineering, and helped the company to launch its self-driving ride programme in Pittsburgh.

It comes after Uber lost its head of communications,Rachel Whetstone, last week,and presidentJeff Joneslast month, the latter of whom said Uber's values didn't reflect his own.

The scandal-struck company has hired former President Obama's ex-Attorney General to conduct an investigation into accusations ofsystemic sexismwithin the firm, where women make up just 15% of tech roles.

Meanwhile, Alphabet's Waymo has accused Uber ofstealing sensing technologyand launched a lawsuit stating that Waymo took seven years to develop the technology whereas Uber took nine months, raising its suspicions.

It also emerged that the ride-hailing company was usingBig Data algorithmsto prevent police from using the service in cities where Uber was restricted or banned, in a programme known as 'Greyball'.

12/04/2017:Uber loses head of communications

Uber's head of communications has resigned, following months of controversies plaguing the ride-sharing app.

Rachel Whetstone, Uber's head of public policy and communications, announced her resignation from the company. Her departure was first announced internally in a staff email from the company's CEO, Travis Kalanick.

"I wanted to let you know that Rachel Whetstone, who heads up policy and communications globally, has decided to leave Uber," he wrote, according to a letter seen by Business Insider,proceeding to praise her work for the company.

Whetstone, who previously served 10 years overseeing communications and public policy for Google, joined Uber in 2015. She had been leading efforts aimed at repairing the company's image, which has recently been tarnished by negative publicity, including allegations of sexual harassment within the company and an unhealthy internal culture.

It was not disclosed whether or not the continuous controversies contributed to Whetstone's decision to resign. According to Recode, however, tension over bad press existed between Kalanick and Whetstone in the time leading up to her departure.

"I am incredibly proud of the team that we've built - and that just as when I left Google, a strong and brilliant woman will be taking my place," Whetstone said in a statement IT Pro received from Uber's press office. "I joined Uber because I love the product - and that love is as strong today as it was when I booked my first ride six years ago."

Kalanick's email explained Whetstone will be succeeded by Jill Hazelbaker, Uber's newly minted SVP of global policy and communications, and Whetstone's frequent right hand.

Whetstone is the latest senior executive to leave to company over recent months, following SVP of engineering Amit Singhal and President Jeff Jones, the latter of whom quit after just six months at the firm, saying its values do not align with his own.

"After we announced our intention to hire a COO, Jeff came to the tough decision that he doesn't see his future at Uber," Kalanick said in a note to staff shared on social media at the time.

Uber is conducting an investigation into claims of sexism at the firm, after former Uber engineer Susan Fowler claimed she was harrassed by a manager who suffered no consequences, and that women were discriminated against.

The company recently released its diversity report, which showed that women make up just 15% of tech roles.

Uber's first diversity report has finally been released, revealing the same underrepresentation of female and non-white employees that exists at many other technology firms.

The report, which appeared on Tuesday, was promised by the ride-hailing service in response to allegations of systemic sexism that have plagued the company over the past few months.

Uber's total workforce is comprised of 36% female employees, which puts it in line with a number of other Silicon Valley companies. Google's workforce is made up of 31% women, Twitter is currently at 37% women, and Slack is out in front at 43%.

Uber's overall employee diversity figures

However there is a substantial drop in Uber's technical roles, where just 15% of the workforce is women.

"Of course, we need to do better and have much more work to do," said Liane Hornsey, Uber's chief human resources officer, in the report. "It's no secret that we're late to release these numbers. And I'd like to thank our employees for their tenacity in arguing the case for greater transparency."

In terms of ethnicity, half of the overall Uber workforce is white, while Asians make up the second largest group at 31%. Black and Hispanic employees represent just 9% and 6% respectively.

Again, these numbers drop drastically when looking at specific roles, as Hispanic and black employees collectively make up just 3% of the entire technical workforce.

Uber has been working to try and repair the damage from a string of PR disasters over the past few months. Former employee Susan Fowler made a dramatic exit from the company in December, claiming that she had suffered sexual harassment by her manager and that Uber decided not to reprimand him due to his strong performance record. Fowler estimated that, within her engineering division, women made up just 3% of the workforce by the time she left.

The allegations prompted an internal investigation led by former US Attorney General Eric Holder, assisted by Uber board member Arianna Huffington and associate general counsel Angela Padilla.

Uber has since hired a new chief human resources officer and a global head of diversity and inclusion, two appointees that have "hit the ground running" in their attempts to recruit underrepresented groups.

Most recently a manager at Uber's engineering division has claimed that sexism is "systemic in tech", and not just a problem at Uber. His comments have since sparked outrage from activists, who claim Uber is trying to sidestep criticism and avoid responsibility for solving their issues.

Alongside Tuesday's report, Uber made a commitment to investing $3 million (2.41 million) over the next three years to support organisations in their attempts to recruit more women into tech, although specific companies were not mentioned.

Picture courtesy of Uber

Uber has once again found itself mired in controversy, after one of its engineering managers tried to sidestep allegations of widespread sexism within the company by claiming the issue "is systemic in tech".

The incident was reported by Kamilah Taylor, a senior software engineer at LinkedIn. Taylor was approached by the Uber manager in an attempt to recruit her for a role at the company, but said she had "no interest in joining Uber" due to the company's "questionable business practises and sexism".

Rather than attempting to reassure Taylor that Uber is working to ameliorate the problem, however, the female manager apparently attempted to dismiss her concerns. "I understand your concern," she wrote. "I just want to say that sexism is systemic in tech and other industries."

This has prompted outrage from activists and onlookers, who have suggested that this attitude shows Uber is failing to take responsibility for the cultural problems within its organisation.

Many Silicon Valley figures have also pointed out that just because the tech industry continues to struggle with sexism, this does not mean that companies should not be working to change. "I was really shocked," Taylor told the Guardian. "Wouldn't you want to be better than that? Why are you telling me that? Is that your bar?"

When we contacted Uber for comment on the story, the company has yet to reply. However, a spokesperson told the Guardian: "We are investigating," adding, "this message was not sanctioned by Uber's recruiting department."

Uber has been reeling from a seemingly never-ending series of scandals and PR gaffes over the last few months. Kicked off by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler's lengthy expos of the company's endemic sexism, the company has suffered a series of damaging incidents which culminated with the company's president quitting the job after just six months. He blamed the departure on Uber's values, which he said were "inconsistent" with his own.

The company has been attempting to fight these fires, with HuffPo founder and Uber board member Ariana Huffington heading up an internal investigation into its workplace culture. In contrast to the comments reported by Taylor, Huffington recently told reporters that sexism "is not a systemic problem" at Uber.

As part of efforts to combat allegations of sexism, the company will be revealing data on the diversity of its workforce for the first time ever. The data will be made public at Silicon Valley's PUSH Tech 2020 summit, an event organised by Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition in order to promote black and minority inclusion in tech industry roles.

Uber's president has quit the company after just six months, saying that working there doesn't fit with his beliefs.

Jeff Jones' departure is directly linked to the widely-reported cultural problems at Uber, according to Recode, which broke the news. These includeallegations of endemic sexism, regulatory disputes and a series of ongoing skirmishes with disgruntled drivers.

"It is now clear," Jones said in a statement to Recode, "that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber, and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business."

Joining the company from a successful stint at retail giant Target, Jones's brief was both to operate the company's main ride-sharing business and to help repair its image. By this point, Uber had already drawn negative attention over the treatment of its drivers and been involved in multiple spats with governments and taxi drivers' unions.

Following his appointment, the situation continued to decline. Former Uber engineer Susan Fowler penned a lengthy blog post alleging widespread institutionalised sexism within the company, which was followed by some high-level departures over similar issues.

Uber confirmed Jones's departure in a statement. "We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best." CEO Travis Kalanick added that the decision may have been spurred by his announcement that he would be looking to hire a new COO, in order to help put the company back on course after its troubled year.

"After we announced our intention to hire a COO, Jeff came to the tough decision that he doesn't see his future at Uber," Kalanick said in a note to staff shared on social media.

After a string of incidents that have damaged Uber's image in the eyes of the public, CEO Travis Kalanick is now seeking the help of a new partner to help him manage the troubled ride-hailing firm.

First reported by Recode, Kalanick is looking to hire a COO to help run the company.In a short statement released shortly afterwards, Kalanick said: "This morning I told the Uber team that we're actively looking for a chief operating officer: a peer who can partner with me to write the next chapter in our journey."

The decision comes as Uber faces a crisis both in terms of its public image, but also its morale within the company. In January the #DeleteUber campaign went viral on Twitter after Uber was accused of taking advantage of a taxi strike at JFK airport following President Donald Trump's executive travel ban, by dropping surge pricing on Uber rides.

Uber was then forced to launch an internal investigation after former employee Susan Fowler published a blog post alleging systemic sexism and a practice of covering up sexual harassment. This led to the departure of engineering head Amit Singhal after claims of improper conduct against women during a former role at Google.

As if the situation could not get any worse for Uber, Kalanick was then caught on video arguing with an employee over falling wages, an exchange that ended with Kalanick swearing at the driver.

Who Uber will target remains to be seen, although it would make sense for Uber to bring in a female executive, at least to reassure the public and investors that there is a genuine effort to reform the company.

Uber has also yet to fill an empty board seat after Google's executive David Drummond left the company last year, and according to Recode, mostly female candidates are being considered as a replacement.

01/03/2017:'Ashamed' Uber boss filmed swearing at employee

As if Uber wasn't suffering from enough bad publicity from recent allegations of systemic sexism, its CEO has now apologised for swearing at an Uber driver who raised concerns over falling income.

Uber boss Travis Kalanick was hitching a ride inside a car driven by long-time employee Fawzi Kamel, when a heated exchange was captured by the car's dashboard camera, footage that Bloombergobtained.

With the CEO in his car, Kamel took the opportunity to confront Kalanick about Uber's falling fares and his shrinking income. A heated exchange then followed, in which Kalanick becomes increasingly irritable and dismissive of the driver's claims.

In the video, Kamel said: "You're raising the standards, and you're dropping the prices."

"We're not dropping the prices on Black," said Kalanick, Black being Uber's premium service. "We have to; we have competitors; otherwise, we'd go out of business."

"Competitors? Man, you had the business model in your hands. You could have the prices you want, but you choose to buy everybody a ride," added Kamel. The disgruntled driver then explained that recent business decisions to focus on low-end drivers has meant high-end premium drivers are struggling to secure an income.

"I lost $97,000 because of you," said Kamel. "I'm bankrupt because of you. You keep changing every day."

Uber has indeed cut fares for its Black service on multiple occasions since 2012, as much as 10% in a single price gouge, which has led to a reduction of earnings for long-time drivers.

"Bullshit," said Kalanick. "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else." With that, Kalanick leaves the car and slams the door behind him.

Kalanick has since appologised for the content of the video, saying in a memo to employees: "To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. It's clear this video is a reflection of me - and the criticism we've received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I've been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it."

Given Uber's position in the market is somewhat troubled by strong competition from the likes of Lyft, and smaller ride hailing services in other regions, significant price adjustments are understandable. But Kalanick's abrasive personality, coupled with recent allegations of systemic sexism within Uber, has given the impression of a company that does not prioritise the welfare of its staff.

Picture credit: Adam Tinworth