Uber’s standoff with California regulators continues as it refuses to stop its self-driving pilot program in San Francisco.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles on Wednesday called on Uber to either apply for a permit with the agency to legally test self-driving vehicles on public roads in the state, or cease the practice in order to avoid legal action. This was the same day both the ride hailing service and its automaker partner, Volvo, announced the expansion of the pilot program that began earlier this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In a conference call Friday, Anthony Levandowski, Vice President of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, reaffirmed the company’s position that it does not need a permit to operate its fleet of Volvo XC90s in California, trying to differentiate between their “self-driving” cars and the law for “autonomous” cars.

It’s hard to understand why the DMV would seek to require self-driving Ubers to get permits when it accepts that Tesla’s autopilot technology does not need them. We asked for clarification as to specifically what is different about our tech from the DMV, but have not received it.

Levandowski said the XC90s they’re using are not capable of operating without human input, unlike the vehicles Uber believes the DMV’s rules say need to be covered under the permit, comparing it not only to the Tesla system, but pretty much any other vehicle on sale today with a collision avoidance function.

“The distinction between our self-driving Ubers and the autonomous vehicles described by California State law is not a legal nicety. Nor are we seeking to exploit some loophole in the law,” Levandowski said. “It’s an important issue of principle about when companies can operate self-driving cars on the roads and the uneven application of statewide rules across very similar types of technology.”

The Uber-California argument here seems more like a splitting of words, however, when you consider the permit costs $150, according to The Verge. The company’s case for its human input certainly wasn’t helped with the video of one of the Volvos running a red light hours after the program began in San Francisco.

What happens next? Watch this space.

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