Uber CEO Hints At Potential Tesla Partnership For Robotaxis: 'No One Wants To Compete Against Tesla Or Elon'

Uber Technologies UBER CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed optimism for a possible partnership between the ride-hailing company and Tesla Inc TSLA where the latter would deploy its autonomous vehicles on Uber’s platform.

What Happened: “Ultimately, we're hoping that my charm and the economic argument gets Tesla to work with us as well. If they want a direct channel, no problem,” Khosrowshahi said while adding that he does not wish to compete against Tesla if he can help it. The CEO was speaking in an interview with Ben Thompson published on Thursday.

“No one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon, if you can help it. Their capabilities are pretty extraordinary, but I think the same economic laws apply to them”

The Uber CEO is hopeful that the EV giant will deploy its autonomous vehicles, which are currently under development, on the Uber app in addition to its own in favor of higher revenue.

“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.

The Uber CEO noted that popular food chains like McDonald's continue to work with Uber Eats and DoorDash while having their own app.

Why It Matters: Uber stopped developing its own self-driving cars in 2020 and sold its driverless car division to Aurora. Talking about the company’s decision, the CEO said that he prioritized capital at the time as it was in the middle of the pandemic. The company was losing billions in developing robotaxis and hardware was not the company’s “superpower,” he said.

Khosrowshahi applauded Tesla in the interview, saying that it is one of the few companies great at both hardware and software.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in January that the company will start deploying robotaxis for ride-hail in Austin starting in June.

Musk has previously said that he expects his company’s robotaxi fleet to function like a combination of Airbnb and Uber. While a certain portion of the fleet will be owned by Tesla, individual customers can also add or subtract their vehicles to the robotaxi fleet at will. As for riders, they can summon a car using the Tesla App, Musk said.

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