It’s hard to believe, but it was only 10 months ago that Anthony Levandowski ascended to arguably the most enviable position of any engineer pioneering autonomous technology. Uber acquired his months-old self-driving-truck startup in August 2016 for $680 million. After enriching him, the company put him in charge of all its autonomous-development efforts, a critical role for a ride-hailing company with a $60 billion valuation that is largely dependent on a future filled with self-driving vehicles.
At the time, it appeared to be a perfect match between a wildly ambitious, boundary-pushing company and an equally ambitious, envelope-pushing engineer. But less than a year later, the relationship is in shambles, and the role of either party in the advent of autonomous travel appears uncertain. Uber fired Levandowski on Tuesday, citing his refusal to comply with requests for assistance into an internal investigation into whether Uber?s new lidar sensors had been built using proprietary trade secrets that Levandowski had extracted from his previous employer, Google.

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?Your failure impeded Uber?s internal investigation and defense of the lawsuit referenced above and constitutes a ground for termination for cause.?

? Salle Yoo, Uber general counsel

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The question of whether Levandowski stole more than 14,000 documents related to the autonomous-vehicle technology remains at the heart of a lawsuit that Google brought against Uber and Levandowski in February, a proceedin...