【Watch The Running Mates: Human Rights Online】

A name that came up often during the Uber v. Waymo trade secrets trial is Watch The Running Mates: Human Rights Onlineback in the headlines: Anthony Levandowski.

The former Google-engineer-turned-autonomous-truck-startup-founder-turned-Uber-self-driving-executive announced his latest startup, Pronto. Its "intelligent driving" system for commercial trucks, Copilot, was released Tuesday. It's similar to Tesla's Autopilot, featuring Level 2 autonomous features that require a fully attentive and alert driver, but it's for truckers.

Levandowski worked for Google's Waymo before he left to start his self-driving truck company, Otto, which was almost immediately purchased by Uber. He was then fired from Uber after Waymo said he stole proprietary information about self-driving tech like LiDAR, which uses light and lasers to help vehicles "see." Levandowski refused to cooperate with the investigation leading up to the trial, and Uber ended its driverless truck testing this summer.

The February trial ended after four days. In a settlement, Uber gave Alphabet, Google's parent company, .34 percent of its equity, worth $245 million.

Back in October, a scathing look at Levandowski in the New Yorkerpainted the engineer as a ruthless innovator willing to sacrifice safety to achieve his self-driving goals.

Which brings us back to Tuesday's launch. Levandowski announced that in October a Toyota Prius with the advanced driver assistance system drove 3,100 miles from San Francisco to New York City without intervention. Pronto doesn't claim the Copilot system is fully autonomous.

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The company released a video of the drive accompanied by a deep, resonating voice reading a Charles Bukowski poem.

Pronto says the new assistance system doesn't use LiDAR and sensors and mapping software, but instead relies on cameras and neural networks to help trucks stay in their lanes during long drives.

In a blog post, Levandowski wrote, "Yes I'm back." He also acknowledged the bad press: "Over the past 18 months, as I’ve been painted into a villainous caricature, I’ve had lots of time for introspection."

He continued that he realized no "real" autonomous vehicles exist and that higher levels of autonomy won't arrive "for many more years."

Pronto's Copilot system will be available in the first half of next year, according to the company, and will partner with trucking fleets to be added to vehicles aftermarket. A special intro price is available on the company's simple website for $4,999 per truck. That includes installation of the system, and driver training. Those interested can pre-order the driver assistant for $299.

For anyone hesitant to jump into business with the co-founder who allegedly put a self-driving test car on the freeway before it was ready, resulting in an injured passenger, there's a "Safety" page on the Pronto site.