Exclusive: Arizona governor and Uber kept self-driving program secret, emails reveal

On Monday, eight days after one of Uber’s self-driving vehicles killed a pedestrian in a Phoenix suburb, Ducey suspended the company’s right to operate autonomous cars on public roads in Arizona. It was a major about-face for the governor, who has spent years embracing the Silicon Valley startup.

Uber’s behind-the-scenes efforts to court Ducey, and the governor’s apparent willingness to satisfy the company, is made clear in the emails, which were sent between 2015 and 2007 and obtained by the Guardian through public records requests.

They reveal how Uber offered workspace for Ducey’s staff in San Francisco, praised the governor lavishly, and promised to bring money and jobs to his state. Ducey, meanwhile, helped Uber deal with other officials in Arizona, issued decrees that were friendly to the company, tweeted out an advert at the company’s request, and even seems to have been open to wearing an Uber T-shirt at an official event.

There is no way to know whether tougher regulations would have prevented the death of 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg, who was struck by an Uber-owned Volvo while it was in self-driving mode on 19 March. Uber immediately suspended its self-driving vehicle testing in Arizona, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.

The first fatal crash involving a self-driving vehicle and a pedestrian in the US has sparked a national discussion about the safety of a technology, which tech companies claim will dramatically improve road safety.

However the correspondence between Ducey and Uber will now throw a spotlight on the Arizona governor’s office – and raise questions about his apparently laissez-faire approach to safety. While Arizona’s neighbour California has some of the toughest self-driving regulations in America, other states, such as Michigan and Florida, are at least as permissive as Arizona, with few restrictions and little oversight of highly automated vehicles.

‘A real thought leader’

Arizona was not always a friendly state for Uber. In April 2014, then-governor Jan Brewer vetoed legislation that would have exempted taxi-hailing companies from insurance regulations imposed on traditional taxis.

Uber and Lyft continued to operate in the state, however, risking fines for their drivers. In late 2014, Brewer was replaced by Ducey, a fellow Republican, and Uber almost immediately began its charm offensive. A month after being sworn in, Ducey met with David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, who had been hired by Uber as a senior vice-president, and another Uber executive named Justin Kintz.

The following week, Kintz wrote to Ducey: “I know [Plouffe] and [Uber founder] Travis [Kalanick] are as excited as I am to expand our footprint in Arizona, and we are encouraged that the state legislature is interested in codifying a permanent regulatory structure for ridesharing.”

One of Ducey’s first acts as governor was to instruct officials not to pursue ride-share drivers over taxi licensing rules. Uber seemed to have secured a political ally in Ducey who signed a bill legalizing ride-sharing at a high-profile ceremony in April 2015, flanked by Uber and Lyft drivers and executives.

In the run-up to the ceremony, Uber staff wrote to Ducey’s office with some questions. “Is the governor still interested in wearing an Uber shirt at the event? We’re looking into polo shirts, and it would be great to get his size,” wrote one. “Can we swap out the order and have the Uber driver [introduce the governor]?” wrote another. “I think this makes more sense since this is ultimately about them.”

While Ducey’s team agreed to Uber’s scheduling preference, photographs from the signing show him wearing a plain blue shirt. Nevertheless, Uber was pleased with Ducey’s performance. Justin Kintz sent a gushing email to Ducey’s chief of staff calling the governor “a real thought leader on these innovation issues”. Uber also said it would send out an “all-rider, all-driver email thanking the [governor] and the state of AZ for their leadership.”

In June of 2015, Uber opened a customer support centre in Phoenix that would bring 300 jobs to the city. Two months later, Ducey held a joint press conference with Uber to announce a $25,000 gift by the company to the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences. Uber said that it would base a fleet of mapping cars at the university, and collaborate with academics on laser-ranging lidars.

The same day, Ducey issued an executive order clearing the way for the public testing and operation of autonomous cars, so long as they had human safety drivers inside the vehicles to take over controls in the event of an emergency. Ducey’s decree also allowed fully driverless pilot programs to take place on university campuses. Uber could not have asked for a better order if it had written it itself. (Uber says now that it did, in fact, suggest some concepts for the order.)

The executive order also acknowledged public concerns about the safety of self-driving vehicles. It established a self-driving vehicle oversight committee of experts to advise state agencies and propose new rules – although Uber proposed the company should be part of that group.

In February 2016, Ashwini Chhabra, the head of policy development at Uber, wrote to a transportation policy adviser in Ducey’s office: “Wanted to follow up from our meeting earlier in the month, to discuss the AV oversight committee you are convening. Uber would be happy to participate in that, and I will be our representative to that effort.”

In the end, Uber did not get its own seat on the oversight board mandated to police self-driving programs. But the company is likely to have been pleased by the composition of those who did: all eight of the oversight board’s members are employed by the state and serve at the pleasure of Arizona’s pro-Uber governor. Some were political appointees, others administrators. Only one of its members could be considered an expert in self-driving technologies: Larry Head, a professor of systems engineering at the University of Arizona.

According to its website, the oversight committee has only met once. (Ducey’s office said the committee actually met twice.) It has called no witnesses, demanded no documents, taken no actions, and issued no recommendations.

‘We couldn’t do this without you guys’

After securing the backing of Arizona’s governor, Uber’s next objective was ensuring its drivers could pick up passengers from the state’s main airport, Sky Harbor, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Phoenix city council.

In May 2016, Danny Seiden, Ducey’s deputy chief of staff, asked Craig Hulse, one of Uber’s public policy managers: “Who do you deal with in mayor’s office on airport issues?” Hulse provided names of people in the office of Phoenix’s mayor, who, like most of its city council, is a Democrat. The following month the council passed a plan that was favorable to Uber.

One council member later complained that Ducey had threatened retaliation if a ride-sharing plan for the airport did not go through. “There’s been pressure placed on us by the governor,” Laura Pastor, now vice-mayor of Phoenix, told AZ Central. When the plan eventually passed, one of Uber’s first tweets was to thank Ducey.

The next month, Uber launched its Eats food delivery service in Arizona. Uber’s communications manager, Taylor Patterson, alerted Ducey’s office on 11 July, requesting a gubernatorial plug. “We’d love if you could push out this tweet sometime tomorrow. ‘Welcome @ubereats to AZ! Embracing the sharing economy makes getting fresh food at the tap of a button possible.’ As always thank you so much for your support. We couldn’t do this without you guys.”

The following day, Ducey duly tweeted, “Great to have @UberEats in Az! Embracing the sharing economy makes getting fresh food at the tap of a button possible.” He included a direct link to the Uber Eats website.

The following month, in August 2016, Uber made a major announcement: it would soon launch driverless vehicles on the streets of Pittsburgh, enabling its customers to hail self-driving cars for first time. It seemed like a bold and perhaps risky move for a technology that many experts believed was far from being fully road tested.

Chhabra, Uber’s head of policy development, told Ducey’s office that Phoenix need not feel left out. The city could be close behind: “The expansion in Pittsburgh is a step in this direction, but we’re more excited than ever to bring [our self-driving effort] to fruition in AZ.”

In fact, Uber was already planning to quietly upgrade the mapping cars it had in Arizona to autonomous vehicles. On 19 August, Chhabra wrote Seiden, the governor’s deputy chief of staff, to let him know that “starting this weekend” Uber would “start testing some self-driving functionality”. It was an innocuous-seeming email that in fact announced a major precedent. “There will be safety drivers at the wheel, so won’t look much different from what’s already been on the road but wanted to flag it for you nonetheless,” Chhabra said.

Remarkably, the public appears to have been kept in the dark. Because of Arizona’s regulatory vacuum, neither Uber nor Ducey were obliged to inform the public that Uber’s cars would now be driving themselves on public roads. Neither, it seems, did they believe they had an ethical duty to do so.

Uber says that it did not make a public announcement because its efforts were focused on launching the Pittsburgh pilot. Uber did, however, at least suggest keeping someone in local law enforcement in the loop over that Uber’s self-driving vehicles would be on state roads. Chhabra wrote to Seiden, saying Uber wanted to give Phoenix police department “a heads up” about the secret program, and asking if he would recommend someone “discreet” to contact.

Contacted by the Guardian, Ducey declined to explain why the governor’s office chose to keep the program secret. However the emails make clear the links between his office and Uber were getting closer all the time.

When Seiden took a trip to San Francisco that August, Uber offered him the use of its offices. “I’m happy to host you here at Uber and set you up with a work space and any meetings, etc.” wrote a public affairs manager.

‘Arizona welcomes Uber with open arms’

In December, Uber launched its self-driving cars in San Francisco, without applying for the autonomous vehicle testing permits that California requires. It was an audacious move, and it backfired after California revoked the registration of Uber’s 16 test vehicles after several had been spotted running red lights in the city.

Blocked from using the vehicles in California, Uber had a quick fix. It put the cars on a on flatbed truck and transported them across the border, to Arizona. Ducey could not have been happier. “Arizona welcomes Uber self-driving cars with open arms and wide open roads,” he wrote in a statement at the time. “While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses.”

Ducey did not mention that Uber had, in fact, been secretly testing its self-driving cars in the state since the summer.

Ducey’s office failed to provide a substantial response to the Guardian prior to publication. However on Wednesday, his office denied that Uber’s initial autonomous car testing program – which occurred four months before the governor officially announced the arrival of self-driving cars banned from San Francisco – had occurred “in secret”.

Ducey’s team did not dispute that the governor and Uber did not disclose to the public details of the company’s initial testing program. However the spokesperson argued that the governor’s executive order made clear self-driving cars would be road-tested in the state. “Arizona has been very public about the testing and operation of self-driving cars – it has been anything but a secret,” the spokesperson said, adding: “The governor’s executive order first and foremost prioritized public safety, as with all initiatives related to this technology. The order did not benefit any single company, but paved the way for testing, which had already been occurring around the country.”

The self-driving vehicle oversight committee created by Ducey appeared not to have any qualms about the sudden arrival of experimental vehicles banned from San Francisco after apparently breaking traffic laws. Committee member Larry Head issued a statement that read: “People should be a little more open-minded and be excited about the opportunity. Technology is really cool.”

The next month, in January 2017, Ducey delivered a state of the state speech that Uber’s Kintz called “outstanding” in an email to his staff. The governor’s address was certainly beneficial to Uber; Ducey declared that Arizona’s approach to self-driving technology would be “the opposite approach” to California, which he said had moved “backwards with more nutty ideas”, and added: “We will move forward by rolling up our sleeves and rolling back more regulations that are standing in the way of job growth.”

By the time of the fatal crash earlier this month, around half of all Uber’s 200 self-driving cars were located in Arizona. The fatality has shed light on the quality of Uber’s self-driving program technology, which can be measured by the number of times human drivers are forced to take over the controls from the autonomous computer.

According to the New York Times, Uber’s human drivers had to intervene far more frequently than those working for its rivals. It reported that Waymo, Google’s self-driving car spinoff, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to seize control of its vehicles. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona, according to the Times.

It is also unclear how much economic reward Arizona has reaped from its relationship with Uber in returning for opening itself up as a low-regulation testing ground for the company.

Uber has retained its high-level executives and engineering know-how, for example, in San Francisco and Pittsburgh. And despite the fanfare Ducey created around Uber’s collaboration with Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences, its dean told the Guardian: “Our dialog with Uber has not led to any significant ongoing research engagement.”

But Ducey still has sleeves to roll up. Two weeks before the fatal crash, he issued a new executive order explicitly allowing fully driverless vehicles on Arizona’s roads, as long as companies claim that their vehicles comply with federal safety standards.

In a statement he wrote 17 days before Herzberg was killed, Ducey said: “This executive order embraces new technologies by creating an environment that supports autonomous vehicle innovation and maintains a focus on public safety.”

• This article was amended on 28 March 2018 to correct the amount of time that elapsed between the fatal crash and the suspension of Uber’s self-driving program, and to include a statement from the governor’s office that was received after publication. It was further amended on 29 March 2018 to correct to an erroneous reference to Hulse emailing Seiden for names of officials in the mayor’s office. As the story now makes clear, the email requesting names was sent by Seiden to Hulse.