Uber is officially ending its project to develop self-driving trucks and will instead, focus its efforts on autonomous-vehicle technology.
According to the report from Reuters, the ride-hailing company is closing shop on its autonomous freight truck division which was launched in 2016 after it acquired Otto - a startup company developing aftermarket kits that allow freight trucks to travel driverless on freeways.
This decision from the ride-share firm not only put an end on Uber Freight but also with its accompanying app that helped users avail of the hauling service.
Along with Uber's USD$680 million-worth acquisition of the tech company was Otto's co-founder Anthony Levandowski joining in the fold. The latter happens to be one of the head thinkers in creating Google's first self-driving car.
Earlier this year, Uber revealed plans on integrating manual control and auto-pilot mode on its freight trucks with the latter being put in use when traveling in highways while shifting to the human driver when traversing the tricky city streets.
"We've decided to stop development on our self-driving truck program and move forward exclusively with cars," Eric Meyhofer, Uber's chief executive in its advanced technologies department, said in an email.
As already stated, Uber will instead shift its focus in bringing more innovation on its self-driving cars.
"We recently took the important step of returning to public roads in Pittsburgh, and as we look to continue that momentum, we believe having our entire team's energy and expertise focused on this effort is the best path forward."
Uber had recently met some obstacles as it spearheads its driverless car project. In March of this year, the company was forced to put a halt on its road tests when an autonomous vehicle accidentally killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
The same case happened in Pittsburgh, but Uber was given the green light to resume road tests just this month on a condition that there'd be a human operator behind the wheel.
Uber ATG is just but one of the many players in the autonomous vehicle industry. In the US alone, Uber is on a race to develop human-less driving with rising auto companies like Tesla and Alphabet Inc's Waymo, just to name a few. This is not to mention other car giants like Ford and General Motors who are also vying their way to put these hi-tech cars on the street.
At the beginning of this year, Uber said that its self-driving cabs will likely to begin cruising the road in 2019.
