Rideshare Review: March

This month has been full of news in the rideshare industry, and a lot of it has to do with, you guessed it... Uber. This past month has been disastrous for Uber, with their name in the headlines daily, and not so favorably either. Here is a shortened list of the major events that occurred this month.

1. Uber's self-driving car came crashing down, literally.

In Arizona, one of Uber's self-driving test vehicles was the cause for an accident that caused damage to two human-driven cars in the area. No major injuries were reported for the incident, but it was documented and gained much media attention in the aftermath. Some leaked internal documents also show that the self-driving cars at Uber do not seem to be making any steady improvements.

2. Diversity issues escalated at Uber.

After recent allegations of Uber being a company dominated by men and discriminatory against women, the company is expected to release data related to the company's diversity and work culture next week. Apparently, this information was not ever made aware to human resource employees at Uber. The recruiting employees were tasked with hiring a more diverse workforce, however, they were never given any company demographics to benchmark these efforts.

3. Uber lost its President, Jeff Jones

Former President of Uber Jeff Jones left the company after holding his position for a short number of months. Jones stated his reason for leaving had to do with the misalignment of Uber’s beliefs and approach to leadership with his own views. For these reasons he stated he “could no longer continue as president of the ride-sharing business”.

4. Google sued Uber over intellectual property theft

Google, which happens to be one of Uber’s investors, recently filed a lawsuit against Uber on the basis of intellectual property theft. Google alleged that Uber’s autonomous vehicle team took the idea and development from Waymo, which is Google’s self-driving car group. They claimed the technology was first used by Waymo and later taken by Uber in an attempt to avoid developing their own technology.