Uber is embroiled in a nasty battle with Google’s self-riving subsidary Waymo over the former’s acquisition of Otto. And things don’t appear to be going in Uber’s favor at this point of time. Meanwhile, the company appears to have dropped the “Otto” name from its driverless truck unit — a few weeks before removing Founder Anthony Levandowski from its LiDAR unit.
The reasons for this name change are unclear. Along with internal troubles with Otto and Anthony Levandowski, the cab aggregator was recently slapped with a lawsuit by a Canadian firm called Otto Motors, a unit of Clearpath Robotics. The company operates in a somewhat similar domain and makes autonomous vehicles for warehouses and industrial facilities.
The suit had been dismissed and Clearpath and Uber were said to have arrived at some sort of an understanding regarding the name. A couple of months later, Uber quietly dropped the Otto name and the Ot.to website started redirecting users to the Uber ATG page.
The statement provided by an Otto spokeswoman to Forbes, failed to shed much light on the matter:
We are continuing to operate under the OTTO brand, whereas Uber has recently announced on its website that it is retiring the OTTO name.
The company could have avoided the fanfare because it wanted to prevent wrong conclusions from being reached and the dropping off of the Otto name to be seen as some sign of the company giving up in its lawsuit against Waymo. Conversely, the company could have taken the lawsuit as an opportunity and quickly rid itself of the Otto name using a valid pretext.
