Robotaxis can’t be a solo act
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Robotaxis might not need drivers. But they still need passengers—lots of them.
That might seem to be stating the obvious. And yet, when Elon Musk announced in early April that Tesla was planning to unveil its own robotaxi, the first instinct of investors was to bail on a company that already had a platform of 150 million people using it at least once a month for rides and food delivery. Uber lost nearly one-quarter of its market value over the following four months.
The stock has since clawed back much of that ground, due in part to a smattering of deals Uber has signed with such robotaxi providers as Waymo and Cruise. Those deals help make the case that Uber’s massive platform of riders has value in a world in which expensive, driverless taxis need a steady base of passengers to make their economics work. The deal with Waymo was particularly notable, as the company already runs its own robotaxi service in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Under that agreement, Uber will be the exclusive platform for booking rides in Waymo’s cars in Atlanta and Austin, Texas, when the service launches in those two markets next year. While Uber once aspired to build its own robotaxis, it has since decided to play to its strengths. “Generally, we want to build a marketplace, and we want to stay as pure-play a marketplace as we can," Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said at a Goldman Sachs investment conference in San Francisco last month.
Still, many investors seem to be betting on a Tesla win—at Uber’s expense. Tesla’s stock price has surged 43% over the past six months, ahead of the company’s robotaxi-unveiling event scheduled for Oct. 10.
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