Uber continues self-driving vehicle testing in SF in defiance of DMV

Uber won’t stop operating self-driving vehicles in San Francisco, despite an order from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to do just that.

The DMV says Uber needs a permit to test its autonomous vehicles, but Uber argues that its vehicles aren’t autonomous at all and therefore it doesn’t need a permit.

“We respectfully disagree with the California Department of Motor Vehicles legal interpretation of today’s autonomous regulations, in particular that Uber needs a testing permit to operate its self-driving cars in San Francisco,” Uber’s self-driving car lead Anthony Levandowski said in a statement to reporters.

Levandowski repeatedly compared Uber’s self-driving cars, which have been on the road in Pittsburgh since mid-September and in San Francisco this week, to Tesla’s self-driving technology. Tesla owners don’t need a special permit to drive their cars, he argued — so why should the Uber engineers who currently sit behind the wheel of Uber’s self-driving vehicles?