Marco della Cava

USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — For Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, investing heavily in self-driving car technology isn't a futuristic luxury. It's a business imperative.

"If we don't get the (autonomous car) software thing nailed, we're not going to be around much longer," the captain of the ride-hailing juggernaut told USA TODAY on Thursday. In his mind, self-driving cars are a societal inevitability that will reduce deaths, traffic and pollution.

"Will it all take time and storytelling (to reassure consumers)? Yes," he said. "But that's where it ultimately ends up."

Kalanick, 40, spoke at Uber's sprawling headquarters here just hours after the company, privately valued at $66 billion, announced two major strategic moves aimed at better positioning itself for an autonomous vehicle future.

Uber is rolling out the first of 100 Volvo SUVs equipped with self-driving features in Pittsburgh later this month, part of a $300 million partnership. Volvo has targeted 2021 for a self-driving car. And Uber is buying Otto, a 100-person start-up focused on bringing autonomous features to tractor-trailers.

Kalanick insisted that neither deals — nor Uber's recent sale of its UberChina operations to rival Didi Chuxing —were designed to make the company more attractive to investors for a possible initial public offering.

IPO 2030?

"My statements on this have been well documented, but you gotta ask, I get it," said Kalanick in his characteristically direct style that blends pauses with declarative statements. "If there was a way to get mass liquidity without going public, (which is) that bureaucracy piece, then I'm super excited about that. Is there a way? I don't know. If I could push (an IPO) to 2030, I would."

Then he joked: "I'd really prefer not to see my employees refreshing on finance.google.com every five minutes. Do they deserve liquidity for their efforts? Of course. But it's about the when and the how."

Typical of tech start-up founders, Kalanick exudes a fierce sense of mission that can often get derailed when a company is beholden to investors. By keeping a tight rein on Uber, Kalanick has so far managed to navigate past potholes that include battles with taxi unions, compensation lawsuits from drivers and accusations of corporate sexism. Uber dwarfs its nearest competitor, $5.5 billion Lyft.

That said, Uber must stay on the road to profitability in an increasingly dynamic market that in the past few months has seen a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, ranging from General Motors' $500 million investment in January in Lyft to Ford Motor Co.'s announcement this week that it would produce a fully autonomous car for ride-hailing purposes by 2021.

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While Kalanick described Uber's new partnership with Volvo as a union of equals that will accelerate both companies' race to an autonomous car, he did not rule out future collaborations with other automakers. "There are lots of options out there," he said.

ATOMS AND BITS

Flipping open his laptop, Kalanick pulled up a slide presentation he had just shared with key employees.

One slide labeled 2016 featured a giant square labeled "atoms," inside which was a smaller square labeled "bits." The next slide reversed the two proportions for 2026, implying that in a decade the world would be dominated by artificially intelligent assistants serving their human masters. Uber wants to be part of that radical shift, Kalanick said.

"I eat using (delivery service) UberEats, I push a button, the food is made, the driver delivers it to me," he said. "But when it's all autonomous, how does the food actually get to my door? There's a tech stack that can get the car through the physical world to my doorstep, but then what, does some robot get out of my car and deliver my food? That's hard. I don't know if that's two decades out, but the point is the physical world is getting wired up fast."

Kalanick suggested that Uber had an ace up its sleeve when it comes to accelerating the pace at which its self-driving software learns to drive: its army of nearly 2 million Uber drivers across 720 countries in more than 500 cities.

Where Google's seven-year-old autonomous car project has so far logged 1.5 million miles with its two dozen self-driving cars operating in four U.S. cities, Kalanick said Uber drivers log "billions of miles a month." He suggested that data helpful to improving self-driving software could be accumulated from both the GPS and video feeds from phones Uber drivers carry in their cars.

Kalanick outlined an Uber technology network that now includes hundreds of scientists at its research and development facility in Pittsburgh; tech counterparts at Volvo's headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden; engineers in San Francisco working on laser radar systems; and Otto's Bay Area teams pushing forward with their trucking project.

Questions about Otto got the CEO animated. Trucking is a $700 billion annual business according to the American Trucking Association, and Kalanick is convinced technology can improve revenue and reduce accident rates for truckers, particularly smaller owner-operators.

"That business is driven by owner-operators trying to make a living with their asset, which is a truck that they drive," he said. "They're human, so they have to sleep, mainly in the truck. But what if you can give them a lot more productivity out of their asset, when that thing can drive 24 hours a day, even while they're sleeping?"

Kalanick adds that in the short run human drivers will remain integral to trucking, if namely for "that last mile navigation. But it's going to be a more humane way to make a living."

UBER DRIVERS IN THE SELF-DRIVING FUTURE

He has the same message for current Uber drivers who might be wondering if they'll be needed once autonomy takes hold.

"This isn't an overnight thing, it'll take a really long time," he said. "But let's take a city like San Francisco. Let's say over a decade or two we go from 30,000 cars on the (Uber) system to a million. Well, there will still be routes then that software can't do, it'll be too hard. So you'll need drivers in those software-equipped cars to help out. And way out, if everything's autonomous, you'll need tens of thousands of people to maintain a fleet of a million cars. So the jobs are there."

Asked about whether self-driving tech might ultimately hit a roadblock in the form of tangled government regulations, Kalanick just smiled. Ultimately, he believes human nature will force the issue.

"There are going to be some places that initially are friendlier to autonomy than others," he said. "So, let's say we're allowed (to use driverless Uber cars) in Toronto, but not in (neighboring) Detroit. Well, pretty soon when the people of Detroit see the reduction in accidents and traffic, they'll say, 'Get this to me right now.' "

As for Kalanick's first ride in an Volvo-Uber self-driving car, the experience took him back to sixth grade.

"That's about when I started coding games and reading sci-fi books and just dreaming, really," he said. "A lot of those things you thought about then were just part of the way-off future. But now we're just at the beginning of all that really happening. And it's just friggin' awesome to wake up in the morning and go wow, 'I'm a part of that.' "

Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco Della Cava @marcodellacava.