Marco della Cava

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber's plan to start picking up passengers in self-driving Volvos hit a roadblock late Wednesday, as the California Department of Motor Vehicles sent the ride-hailing company a cease and desist letter for operating without a permit.

"If Uber does not confirm immediately that it will stop its launch and seek a testing permit, DMV will initiate legal action," wrote DMV attorney Brian Soublet in a letter addressed to Anthony Levandowski, who runs Uber's autonomous car programs.

Uber representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An earlier version of this article announcing Uber's plans featured comments from Levandowski that indicated Uber would be exempt from needing an autonomous car permit from the California DMV.

"Our technology is not autonomous technology," says Levandowski. "I don't want to speculate why other companies have gotten the permits. Maybe they have other plans down the road."

To date, some 20 companies have received DMV permits to test on California roads, including Google, Tesla, Ford and Nvidia.

Uber had planned to begin picking up Bay Area riders with its Volvo self-driving cars Wednesday, expanding on a test program that launched in Pittsburgh this summer.

The ride-hailing company has 11 sensor-packed Volvo XC90 SUVs here in its hometown, some of which will pick up customers. Others will log mapping and sensor research miles. In both cases, a safety driver will be at the wheel to take over in case the technology detects the need to cede control.

"We expect the majority of these rides to take place in self-driving mode, but even so it's not like this technology is totally ready," Levandowski tells USA TODAY. "It's more about giving our customers the chance to experience the future."

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Uber, which has a $300 million partnership to develop self-driving tech with Volvo, began testing a small fleet of Ford Fusion Hybrids last August in Pittsburgh, home to Uber's autonomous car research and development center. Those cars also occasionally pick up passengers.

Levandowski says that expanding the passenger program to San Francisco is an effort to challenge the cars' computer systems with different topographies and road conditions. "In San Francisco, we have to be particularly aware of pedestrians and cyclists," he says.

At present, Uber is not working toward a vehicle that has no steering wheel, pedals or need for a human driver, Levandowski said. Rather, it is pursuing technology that provides a significant level of driver assistance while demanding driver oversight.

The current tug of war over the testing permit speaks to the evolving nature of self-driving car regulations.

Government agencies have spent much of 2016 trying to set guidelines in order to avoid a patchwork of self-driving cars rules that vary by state, which risks making a driverless car legal in one state and illegal in the next.

Earlier this fall, Department of Transportation secretary Anthony Foxx issued a 110-page document aimed at steering tech and automotive companies down the same autonomous car lane.

"Putting some boundaries on the process of testing autonomous cars makes sense given the potential liability they represent if some aspect of the new technology fails," says Karl Brauer, senior analyst with Kelley Blue Book.

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"I suspect the California DMV wants to be on record having official requirements to test vehicles in case something goes wrong," he says. "I'm not aware of what the state is doing to enforce these rules, or how carefully they are overseeing self-driving vehicle tests, but the term 'autonomous vehicle company' leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Apparently Uber has its own interpretation of what that term means, and they don't qualify."

Google, arguably the pioneering company in the autonomous car space, announced Tuesday that it was spinning off its self-driving car team under a new name, Waymo, with a mission to begin commercializing its car sensor technology.

A growing number of tech and automotive companies have joined the self-driving car race, with Ford announcing earlier this year that it plans to build a ride-sharing focused self-driving car with no need for a driver by 2021.

Uber has been particularly aggressive about morphing from a peer-to-peer ride service to a company that could one day have self-driving tech at its core.

Earlier this year, Uber spent $670 million for Otto, a self-driving truck company started by Levandowski and other Google car veterans. More recently, it acquired Geometric Intelligence, which will be the foundation for Uber AI Labs and focus on machine learning applications for self-driving technology.

Levandowski says that the day is still far off when Uber cars won't have human drivers — a looming cultural concern as technological leaps threaten to displace jobs.

"We have a handful of cars today, and it'll be a long time before self-driving Ubers will be material," he says, suggesting that having a self-driving program is as much marketing tool as research project. "Seeing these cars out there (testing) should just make Uber more attractive to customers, which could just generate more need for drivers."

Ask Levandowski when he thinks humans will be shuttling around in driving computers, and the technologist simply cites a figure often touted by autonomous car researchers: Each year, 30,000 Americans are killed in car accidents, and more than a million die worldwide.

"I don't know how long it'll take, could be three months, three years or 30 years," he says. "But the main mission here is simple. To create cars that are safer than the ones driven by people."

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