拆分--Uber為何要出售自駕車部門？

 

Spinning off 拆分

Why is Uber selling its autonomous-vehicle division? Uber為何要出售自駕車部門？

Self-driving cars were meant to be its future 自駕車曾意味著Uber的未來

Business

Dec 10th 2020 edition

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Dec 10th 2020

In 2016 TRAVIS KALANICK, then Uber’s chief executive, described self-driving cars as mission-critical. If somebody managed to beat Uber to making them work, he said, then the rival’s ability to offer taxi trips without paying for human drivers would mean that “Uber is no longer a thing.”

2016年，時任Uber執行長TRAVIS KALANICK稱自駕車為關鍵任務。他說，如果有人能超前Uber讓自駕車行得通，那個對手就能提供計程車服務而不必付錢給駕駛員，那將意味「Uber將變得無足輕重。」

Times change. On December 7th Uber announced the sale of its self-driving arm to a firm called Aurora. No price was given. But Uber said it would put another $400m into the unit; that Dara Khosrowshahi, its current boss, would join Aurora’s board; and that the deal would leave it with a 26% stake in Aurora.

時代改變，Uber在 12月7日宣布將自駕部門出售給Aurora公司，未公布價格。但Uber表示將在此部門另外投入4億美元。現任老闆Dara Khosrowshahi將加入Aurora董事會；此筆交易可得到26％Aurora的股份。

One reason for the spin-off is Uber’s belated effort to return to profit. It lost $8.5bn in 2019, as it fought for market share with rivals such as Lyft. Besides offloading the self-driving unit, the firm has sacked workers and sold its Jump electric-bicycle division to Lime, a scooter firm. On December 8th Uber said it would flog its Elevate flying-car project to a startup called Joby Aviation.

Uber拆分的原因之一是致力轉盈卻遲遲無法達標。2019年Uber為了與對手如Lyft等爭奪市占，虧損85億美元。除了移除自駕車部門，Uber也解雇員工，並將Jump電動自行車部門出售給機車公司Lime。 12月8日，Uber表示將把Elevate飛行汽車項目便宜賣給新創公司Joby Aviation。

Another explanation is that the reality of self-driving has lagged far behind the excitement, as it had done in the idea’s earlier heydays in the 1960s and the 1990s. The machine-learning software on which the cars rely often struggles to cope with “edge cases”, which are absent from software’s training data but pop up regularly on real roads.

另一解釋是，自動駕駛雷聲大卻遲遲不見雨點，如同之前在1960年代和1990年代也曾喧騰一時的情況。汽車所依賴的機器學習軟體通常難以應付「邊緣案例」，這類狀況不見於軟體訓練數據，但經常在真實道路上蹦出。

Uber’s self-driving progress has, according to industry rumours, been slow. In 2018 one of its cars ran over and killed a pedestrian in Arizona. It is not alone; Tesla’s “Autopilot” feature has been linked to at least four deaths since it was launched in 2015. But Uber’s Kalanick-era reputation for rule-breaking has made the pr burden heavier.

業界傳言，Uber的自動駕駛進展緩慢，2018年在亞利桑那州撞死一名行人。無獨有偶，特斯拉的「自動駕駛」功能自2015年推出以來，至少與四人死亡相關。但是，Uber在Kalanick掌舵的時代，聲譽因違規使公關負擔更加沉重。

The bearish interpretation of the sale is that, having given up on self-driving, Uber will remain a fancy taxi-and-delivery firm. But if Aurora can buck expectations and make self-driving work, Uber could license the technology back. And high-tech distractions like self-driving cars—or flying ones—may be the last thing the firm needs. It is under pressure not just from rivals and investors but also from regulatory probes into its other big cost-saving innovation—the assertion that its drivers are not employees, but independent contractors. Joe Biden, America’s president-elect, has called that a “misclassification”. Tighter European rules will come into force by 2022. Those edge cases look urgent.

對這筆交易的看空解釋是，在放棄自動駕駛之後，Uber仍將是一家時髦的計程車和外送公司。但若Aurora能超越期望使自動駕駛變得可行，Uber還是能回頭取得技術授權。為自駕車或飛行車這類高科技分心，可能是Uber最不需要的事。Uber承受的壓力不僅來自競爭對手和投資人，也來自監管機構調查另一節省成本的重大創新–--宣稱駕駛不是Uber員工，而是獨立承攬者。美國總統當選人拜登（Joe Biden）稱為「錯誤分類」。歐洲更嚴格的規則將於2022年生效，這些極端情況看來很緊急。