Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi was speaking at an event in New York City today, where media asked him about a couple of pretty big topics for his company. Firstly, whether Uber might be looking to sell its self-driving car unit, and secondly about the Uber IPO that is set for 2019. Khosrowshahi stated that Uber is not looking to sell its self-driving car unit, which is called Advanced Technologies Group within Uber. Khosrowshahi thinks that this is a pretty big asset to Uber, and it’s not worth selling at this time.
The company is also “quite optimistic” about resuming testing of its autonomous vehicles later this year. Uber had suspended its self-driving car program after an autonomous Uber had killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona back in March. Currently, regulators are still investigating the crash. And that is actually standard for any crash or accident involving transportation vehicles. Whether that’s a car, train, or a plane, regulators need to investigate to see what happened and how it can never happen again. Toyota also recently invested into Uber’s self-driving program and will be offering up some of its own cars to be used in the program. Khosrowshahi also stated that the Advanced Technologies Group will “absolutely” be part of Uber when it does its initial public offering.
Uber is slated to IPO next year, and currently it is looking to clean up its image ahead of that IPO. Uber has gone through a pretty tumultuous time in recent years, and it’s looking to clean that up before going public. But Uber is still on track to go public in 2019. Uber’s IPO is expected to be one of the biggest initial public offerings in recent history. Part of that is due to the fact that Uber has a ton of room to grow still, even though it has taken over many markets in the US and even abroad. And it is also working on self-driving cars which should allow Uber to lower its cost, and bring in more revenue, which equals more profit. And that’s what investors like to see.