Uber ATG upgrades its autonomous truck test fleet with new tech

The Uber ATG truck notably drops all Otto branding, as you can see, since Uber retired that name in May following a trademark dispute raised by Canada’s Otto Motors, and after the self-driving trucking company Uber acquired became the impetus for a suit by Alphabet’s Waymo contesting that Otto execs took confidential company info when they departed Google.

Uber’s Advanced Technology Group has taken over ownership of the project, with Otto falling under its umbrella as of last year, and now the trucks have been upgraded with some aspects of ATG tech for the first time. But ATG trucks product manager Alden Woodrow told me the former Otto team based in San Francisco is still leading the truck tech.

“Otto was based in San Francisco, and so with the integration, most of our engineering effort is still based in San Francisco for the trucks,” he said. “But one of the great things about being part of this larger team is we have that team in Pittsburgh that has a really world-class team and that has had several years’ head start on developing similar technologies. So we work really closely with the team in Pittsburgh.”