A turf war is looming over driverless taxis after it emerged that Google and Uber are developing competing technologies.

Uber is to challenge Google’s supremacy in driverless cars by setting up its own testing facility with Carnegie Mellon University, which houses the world’s largest robotics research organisation. Meanwhile, Google is reported to be developing a taxi-booking service to rival Uber’s.

Uber is to focus its research on vehicle safety, autonomous driving and mapping. Travis Kalanick, its chief executive, angered drivers using the company’s platform by suggesting that they would soon become obsolete.

Jeff Holden, its chief product officer, said that the research project presented a “unique opportunity” to invest in technologies that could “enable the safe and efficient movement of people and things at giant scale”.

The fates of Google and Uber are intertwined. Google has hundreds of millions of dollars invested in Uber and its chief legal officer, David Drummond, sits on Uber’s board. Uber, meanwhile, uses Google Maps to power its smartphone app.

A report by Bloomberg suggested that Google was developing its own ride-sharing app to use in its driverless cars. Uber executives had been shown screenshots of the app in use by Google employees, the report said.

Silicon Valley companies often develop in-house systems before releasing them to the wider world, as Facebook did with its new Facebook at Work system.

Google declined to comment, but a tweet posted by the company appeared to indicate that it had no immediate plans to compete with existing ride-sharing services. “We think you’ll find Uber and Lyft [a competitor to Uber] work quite well,” the tweet said. “We use them all the time.”

Insiders at Google also played down the importance of the ride-sharing app. One said that it had been created by an engineer to help employees share cars on their way to work, and had nothing to do with Google’s driverless car programme.

Mr Kalanick said last May: “The reason Uber could be expensive is you’re paying for the other dude in the car. When there is no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere is cheaper. Even on a road trip.”

He said that such a scenario was “quite a way off . . . but if I were talking to one of the drivers we partner with, I’d say, look: this is the way the world is going to go and if Uber didn’t go that way, it won’t exist”.