Uber to meet with DMV and California Attorney General's office amid autonomous vehicle testing issues
Richard Procter / San Francisco Business Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
Uber launched its San Francisco self-driving pilot without a permit, arguing its vehicles were no different from Teslas running Autopilot — a distinction California's DMV rejected. The confrontation escalated when the state Attorney General threatened injunctive relief unless Uber stopped testing on public roads, and this meeting is Uber's attempt to negotiate before that happens.
The stakes are deployment geography: Uber has already signaled it will move the pilot elsewhere if California won't accommodate it, making this meeting a test of whether states can force ride-hail operators through the same permitting gate as everyone else.
First-order effects
- Uber faces an immediate binary: reach terms with the DMV and Attorney General or lose its San Francisco pilot entirely, since registration revocation makes the current fleet illegal on public roads.
Second-order effects
- If Uber relocates testing to a more permissive state, it hands that state the jobs and data of autonomous ride-hailing while pressuring California to choose between enforcement and losing the category altogether.
Third-order effects
- The eventual outcome — Uber applying for a permit after initially refusing — points toward permit regimes becoming the standard gate for AV testing nationwide, with companies learning that defiance costs more time than compliance; Uber's later permit granted in 2020, held but unused, shows how durable that compliance posture became.
The trend: Autonomous vehicle testing is moving from regulatory gray zones toward formal state permitting regimes, with California setting the template other states and regulators follow.