Uber’s self-driving cars ride into Texas

Uber’s autonomous cars are coming to Texas. 

On Tuesday, Uber’s Advantaged Technologies Group announced it would test its vehicles in Dallas. Don’t expect to see cars without drivers on the streets just yet, though. At first, they’ll only be allowed in manual mode, in which Uber collects data from vehicles with human drivers. 

After a self-driving car was involved in a crash that killed a woman in Tempe last year, Uber pulled its vehicles off the road in Arizona. (Meanwhile, Waymo’s self-driving car service is operating in the Phoenix area.) Uber is also testing autonomous cars in Pittsburgh and collecting data in its cars in San Francisco and Toronto. 

Dallas will initially serve as a “data collection” site, meaning the cars there will be driven by humans in manual mode, even if they are capable of self-driving. In a blog post, the head of ATG strategy wrote, “The data we collect will inform our next steps — we may not look to test our self-driving system in Dallas immediately following this first round of data gathering.”

It wasn’t the most surprising choice. Last month, a 3,000-employee Uber office was announced in downtown Dallas, with jobs revolving around ride-hailing, food delivery, and the company’s future air taxi business.

Dallas is one of the sites where Uber Air’s flying taxis are supposed to take off by 2023. Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia, are other cities slated to first experience Uber’s low-altitude, short-distance commuting by air. 

It helps that Texas is an autonomous vehicle-friendly state with pilots in several cities involving Drive.ai (before Apple acquired the company), Designated Driver, Nuro, and others.

Uber’s manual self-driving program in Dallas starts in November.