- Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said he would rather not go up against Elon Musk and Tesla.
- Musk said in January that Tesla would start a paid robotaxi service in Austin this summer.
- Khosrowshahi said that Tesla’s cars would do better if they could also take Uber rides.
Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is hopeful that his company will be able to work with Tesla and Elon Musk when robotaxis comes out.
Ben Thompson, a tech and media expert, talked to Khosrowshahi for his newsletter Stratechery and asked him about Tesla. The chat came out on Thursday.
He told Thompson, “Listen up, no one wants to go up against Tesla or Elon if they can help it.” “Their capabilities are pretty extraordinary, but I think the same economic laws apply to them.”
Musk talked about Tesla’s robotaxi, which is also called the Cybercab, at a launch event in October. As part of an earnings call in January, Musk told investors that in June, Austin would get a paid robotaxi service.
Thompson talked to Khosrowshahi, who said that Tesla would gain from having its cars offer rides on Uber.
“Then, that Tesla that is both on Uber, and by the way, they could be both on Uber and the network, that is going to create much, much more revenue,” said Khosrowshahi.
“So it all comes back to revenue generation, you have a box with wheels, you want to maximize the revenue of that box in order to reduce your cost of capital, and economic laws apply to Tesla, just as they do to any other car company,” he said.
Thompson was told by Khosrowshahi that the same rule applied to the food business, where restaurants use more than one delivery service to reach more people.
There is an app for McDonald’s, and the company has a great name, a lot of money, and a great reach. They still work with Uber Eats and DoorDash because they want to get more people to use the “box” that’s called the restaurant. “That same economic value will be true going forward,” Khosrowshahi said.
“Ultimately, we’re hoping that my charm and the economic argument gets Tesla to work with us as well,” he said more. “If they want a direct channel, no problem.”
Uber and Tesla were asked to react, but they didn’t
This is not the first time Khosrowshahi has said he wants to work with Musk and Tesla. Uber works with companies like Waymo and Wayve that make self-driving cars.
“Getting along with Elon Musk isn’t easy, and we don’t take anything for granted,” Khosrowshahi told the Financial Times in October.
“I don’t think this will be a market where one person wins everything.” People who work together are important to us. “We’ll see what Tesla does, and then we’ll either go up against them or work with them, or a mix of the two,” he said.
Due to the problems that self-driving cars have with the law, it’s still not clear when Tesla’s plans for the robotaxi will be able to come true.
In October, Carnegie Mellon University professor Phil Koopman told BI that it would be hard for Tesla to get the federal government to let them sell a car without a steering wheel.
Koopman also said that Tesla would need to get permission from each state if it wanted to make the robotaxi network reach more places.
When Musk spoke to investors in January, he said that he hoped Tesla would have fully self-driving cars in most countries by the end of 2026, but that could be “limited simply by regulatory issues.”
“That’s my prediction with the best data that I have right now,” he said.
What do you say about this story? Visit Parhlo World For more.
