Technology

Posted on May 18, 2018 by staff

Uber’s flying car chief leaves tech giant

Technology

Uber’s chief product officer Jeff Holden has left the app-based taxi firm.

No reason was given for the exit of Holden, a former executive at Groupon and Amazon who joined the firm four years ago and oversaw development of the firm’s flying car operation Uber Elevate.

Eric Allison will now head that project.

Holden was a keynote speaker at Uber’s Elevate Summit in Los Angeles just weeks ago. It used the conference to release a prototype of its flying taxi and unveil plans to begin testing a flying taxi service, UberAir, in 2020.

There have been more than a dozen departures of senior figures since Dara Khosrowshahi took over as Uber’s chief executive officer last August.

Last year the firm came under fire for its reportedly sexist company culture under former CEO Travis Kalanick.

It also admitted hiding a 2016 data breach which saw the personal details of 57 million customers and drivers stolen and settled a legal battle with self-driving car development company Waymo over the alleged theft of trade secrets.

Uber reportedly has plans to float in 2019 but has not had a CFO since 2015.