Uber Nowhere Close to Having a Fully Autonomous Vehicle, Its Self-Driving Cars Need a Lot of Human Help

Uber may see self-driving cars as "existential" to its future, but the company is nowhere close to having a fully autonomous vehicle. According to internal documents obtained by Recode, during the week ending March 8, Uber's self-driving cars traveled, on average, just 0.8 miles on their own before a human had to take over, in a process known as "disengagement." From the report: As a whole, Uber's self-driving system is putting on many more miles than it did in January. Last week, the company's 43 active cars drove 20,354 miles autonomously, according to the documents. This is only the second time since late December 2016 that its cars have driven more than 20,000 miles in a week. In January, the cars only drove 5,000 miles. At that point, however, the company only had about 20 active vehicles, mainly in Pittsburgh. By February, the company's cars were driving themselves around 18,000 miles a week. Uber passengers took around 930 rides in these autonomous cars in Pittsburgh last week and around 150 rides in Phoenix. To be clear, these vehicles still had a driver at the wheel to take over if needed. In Pittsburgh, where Uber launched its commercial self-driving pilot in September, the company has been performing around 800 or more UberX trips per week in semi-autonomous mode since the middle of February.