A report out this morning from the venerable NPR claiming that Uber intends to do away with surge pricing caught many users of the ride-hail app completely off guard. The piece, titled "Uber Plans To Kill Surge Pricing, Though Drivers Say It Makes Job Worth It," said that Uber's engineering lead at Uber Advanced Technologies Center, Jeff Schneider, confirmed that the company views the dynamic pricing feature of the app — where rates can double or triple in an effort to drive driver supply and reduce passenger demand — as a market failure, and that they would soon do away with it.

"That's where machine learning comes in," Schneider told NPR. "That's where the next generation comes in. Because now we can look at all this data, and we can start to make predictions." The idea being, Schneider suggests, that with better data Uber can somehow allocate drivers more efficiently without needing to resort to surge (though how the company intends to tell its independent contractors to work at certain times or in certain areas is unclear).

But not so fast. Shortly after NPR published its story, Market Watch followed up with a report directly contradicting the end-of-surge-pricing news. SFist reached out to Uber, and a company spokesperson echoed the Market Watch report. "Uber is always looking for ways to better predict supply and demand in a city," she wrote. "But this story is not accurate: We have no plans to end dynamic pricing. While we understand that no one likes to pay more for the same trip, it's the only way to ensure that passengers can always get a ride when they need one."

So what's going on here? Did Schneider perhaps let slip an internal company discussion that wasn't ready for prime time? Or did NPR just get it wrong? As a fellow reporter, I find it hard to believe that the reporter behind the All Tech Considered story simply misheard or misunderstood Schneider — Uber ending surge pricing is big enough news that you would want to make sure you heard it correctly.

Regardless of the reason behind the mix-up, it appears that while Uber may indeed intend to do away with surge pricing at some point in the future — like when self-driving cars can be driven around the clock and sent wherever the company wants — it's likely not happening any time soon. Looks like we'll all just have to get used to those 4.7x surges (or, you know, hail a cab).

Update: Despite denials from Uber, NPR is sticking to its original reporting — and has video to back up its story. Here is the relevant part of the interview, video of which is embedded below, as highlighted by All Tech Considered.

Schneider: And so the idea is if you can predict that demand, you get that information out there - and you get that supply there ready for the demand so the surge pricing never even has to happen. And I think that's one of the really cool things that machine learning's doing for Uber right now.

[NPR Reporter] Shahani: So just note, Jeff from Uber is saying that machine learning will solve the problem and get rid of surge pricing.

Schneider: There we go!

Shahani: There we go, promise to customers.

So, it sounds like the company is indeed working toward ending surge pricing, but we shouldn't expect that surge-free reality in the near future.

Related: State Senate Panel Falls One Vote Short On Bill To Ban Surge Pricing For Uber And Lyft