Uber says it won’t leave drivers stranded when cars don’t need them

Uber drivers that are likely to lose their jobs with the rise of autonomous cars could be retrained by the company for different lines of work, CEO Travis Kalanick says.

Kalanick has previously seemed rather unconcerned about the prospect of Uber drivers no longer being necessary.

“When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of Uber becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle,” he told the CODE conference last year.

When asked what he would tell the drivers, he responded with: “I would say to them, this is the way the world is going”.

But now Kalanick is suggesting that there are “easy ideas” to assist these drivers that may be replaced by self-driving cars, such as vocational training, as Tech Crunch reports.

“You’ll see Uber working on this way before the transition happens,” Kalanick said at the Summit At Sea conference.

He extended on this notion of a transitional period, saying there’ll be a time when new cars are phased in so drivers don’t abruptly lose their source of income.

Either way, drivers should prepare for the arrival of autonomous technology. Uber is already developing driverless cars, as is investor Google Ventures’ parent company.

“Do we want to embrace the future and embrace the technology, or resist it?” Kalanick asked at the conference.

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