SAN FRANCISCO—California has put the brakes on Uber’s weeklong experiment with using self-driving cars on the streets of San Francisco.
Regulators revoked the registrations of the self-driving cars Uber had been using on its hometown roads after the failure of a week of talks between the state and the ride-hailing company, officials said Wednesday.
Hours after Uber launched the service last Wednesday, the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles threatened legal action. The cars need the same special permit as the 20 other companies testing self-driving technology in California, regulators argued.
Uber maintains it does not need a permit because the cars are not sophisticated enough to continuously drive themselves, although the company promotes them as “self-driving.”
The DMV said the registrations for the vehicles were improperly issued because they were not properly marked as test vehicles. It invited Uber to seek a permit so their vehicles could operate legally in California—an offer the company said it did not plan to accept.
Uber said in a statement that it was looking for where it could redeploy the cars, but remained 100 percent committed to California and would redouble its efforts “to develop workable statewide rules.”
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said he was “pleased to hear that the DMV took enforcement action.”
“I have always been a strong supporter of innovation and autonomous vehicle development and testing, but only under conditions that put human, bicyclist and pedestrian safety first,” he said in a statement.
