It is to no surprise for the reputation management agency company that Uber and
Lyft have been going head to head. Before Kalanick hired an engineer to continue on the self-driving car project they had been running, he knew about the stolen files that the engineer had. Kalanick told the engineer that he couldn’t bring the files to the ride-hailing company. The engineer Anthony Levandowski told Uber that he had destroyed the files before Uber purchased his startup for $680 million. Waymo had brought forth a lawsuit claiming that Uber used the stolen trade secrets of their driverless vehicles.

When Waymo had found out about the stolen files, they had asked Uber to delete the stolen files and to show them proof that they had been deleted. Levandowski told Kalanick and two other employees that he had five discs containing Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo documents months before the company acquired his startup Otto. Now he is being accused of stealing technology and handing it over to Uber. Even though he had been accused of bringing these documents over to Uber, none of the documents were brought over and Kalanick didn’t even want those documents. Uber had claimed to want to build their own self-driving vehicle project on their own without Waymo’s files.

Since the industry of autonomous driving is so competitive it is important that the companies continue to work on their projects. There is a high turnover rate when it comes to the autonomous vehicle industry due to the fact that most of the engineers and employees are trying to figure out the secret technology behind the automotive driving. Uber and Waymo should continue to focus on their individual projects as they are basically on a race to see who can deliver a trusted product first. The reason that these companies want automotive vehicles is due to the fact of the number of car accidents that happen every year in the U.S., both company’s want to prevent these statistics from rising.