i'm not sure what uber's intention was, but there's a silver lining:

1) The barrier to entry in this space is somewhat low and now it's higher. Within 4 months, a small talented group can build a decent self-driving system from scratch. The DMV's action might have a (slight) chilling affect on small self-driving car operations, and gives (a small) advantage to big operations like Uber.

2) If uber thought their launch was a failure (maybe the supervisors had to intervene too often), scuttling the launch in this way buys them some time to incorporate the lessons they learned from their brief foray.