Jeff Chiu / AP
Thursday was a big day of headlines for the ride-hailing industry, so here are the highlights:
- Uber's self-driving cars aren't improving very fast: According to internal documents obtained by BuzzFeed, Uber's self-driving cars drove at a rate of about a mile without human intervention in Arizona the week of March 5. Recode obtained documents for Uber's testing in Arizona, California, and Pennsylvania, which showed similar slow improvements—and sometimes declining performance.
- Uber wants to take Waymo's IP theft lawsuit out of the courts: The company told a judge that it will file a motion to move the lawsuit to arbitration. The reasoning: The former Google employee at the center of it, who now works for Uber, had an arbitration clause in his employment contract.
- "Safety third" is the motto at Uber's self-driving unit: This is one of the interesting nuggets from a recent look at Uber's autonomous driving efforts from Bloomberg.
- Lyft's $27 million lawsuit settlement is finally approved: The ride-hailing company gets to finally close the book on a 2013 lawsuit over its classification of its drivers as contractors instead of employees. Uber's similar lawsuit, however, is still ongoing.
- Spotify is rethinking its relationship with Uber since all the bad press: The music streaming company is allegedly distancing itself from Uber, with which it's had a partnership since 2014 that lets passengers play music while on a ride.