We took a video tour of a self-driving semi from Otto, Uber’s newest purchase

Otto was a small, eight-month-old startup rigging semis with self-driving systems. Until last week — when it became a small, eight-month-old startup that Uber now owns.

The proprietary tech that Otto is building is now a key part of Uber’s plans for autonomous vehicles. Otto says it will keep operating independently, moving toward its mission of retrofitting trucks with self-driving tech.

To check out the technology and trucks ourselves, we visited the company’s headquarters in a converted warehouse in downtown San Francisco. Eric Berdinis, a product manager for Otto, walked us through the hardware and computing that turns hunks of metal into hunks of metal that can drive themselves down highways.

Later, we took a drive inside one of Otto’s six test vehicles on the freeway, but the company is not quite ready for live video from there yet (liabilities and all). Stay tuned for footage from inside the cab.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

We're here to shed some clarity

One of our core beliefs here at Vox is that everyone needs and deserves access to the information that helps them understand the world, regardless of whether they can pay for a subscription. With the 2024 election on the horizon, more people are turning to us for clear and balanced explanations of the issues and policies at stake. We’re so grateful that we’re on track to hit 85,000 contributions to the Vox Contributions program before the end of the year, which in turn helps us keep this work free. We need to add 2,500 contributions this month to hit that goal. Will you make a contribution today to help us hit this goal and support our policy coverage? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via