In 2020, Uber was at a crossroads: the company had made an expensive bet on robot taxis, but the project was loaded with legal problems and burning with money. So Uber gave it to another beginner.
But five years later, Uber’s future looks like autonomous vehicles like never before. The company is now concreting that it can embrace taxis without a driver without spending money to build them – at risk of being overcome by the companies they make.
In recent months, Uber has doubled in what she calls her “platform strategy”, joining robot taxi companies like Waymo. In Phoenix, knights can order a Waymo machine through Uber app, and in Austin, Texas, Waymo robot taxis will soon donate the Uber logo. The travel giant now has 15 autonomous vehicle partnerships, from Waymo to international companies such as Weride and autonomous food delivery services as Avride.
But those partners are also competitors. In December, when Waymo said he was expanding to Miami without a Uber partnership, Uber’s shares dropped 9 percent. And Waymo’s expansion is far away: last month, the company announced it would try its vehicles in 10 new cities this year.
Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said last week his company would have self-direction taxi on the streets of Austin in June. He had made similar predictions for years when Tesla vehicles would be able to drive themselves, but industry interiors say he is very likely just a matter of time before his company did well in his promise .
For Uber, the question is whether to ride or run from expanding the driverless taxi. “No one is exactly sure who will be the winning technology,” said Tom White, a senior research analyst at the DA Davidson financial firm. “So everyone is keeping their possible enemies close.”
On Wednesday morning, Uber said that in its latest quarter, its gross booking, an important company business measure, increased 18 percent by a year ago, which was higher than they had expected Wall Street investors. Uber’s revenue increased 20 percent to $ 12 billion, also higher than Wall Street’s expectations. Uber also defeated net income expectations thanks to $ 7 billion in tax benefits.
Wall Street analysts asked Uber’s leaders about his vision for the robot taxi market at a phone conference Wednesday morning.
“The first markets to penetrate will depend on the adjustment,” said Dara KhosroWHAHI, the chief executive of Uber. “I think in the next five years, the addressable market will surely be in the order of 10 to 15 percent of the general market.”
In 2010, Hype about autonomous vehicles “probably came ahead of technology,” said Andrew MacDonald, the senior Uber Mobility Vice President in an interview. “Now this is starting to roll.”
It is difficult to show if Waymo has cut into Uber business, including in cities like San Francisco, where Waymo cars can rightly be described as a major transport option. (Mr. Khosrowshahi has said that robot taxis did not affect the request for Ubers.)
Lyft, Uber’s main rival, has received a similar approach to robot taxis, announcing three autonomous partnerships since November, with more work.
The value of robot taxes for Uber and Lyft is clear: Human work is one of their greatest costs. Companies also anticipate a future when people will buy robots taxi to use as personal vehicles and, within the outside schedule, rented them to ride on greetings, said Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s Experience Experience.
But for now, robot taxis are more expensive than they are profitable and require a large amount of capital to develop. After General Motors, the owner of Cruise, bent out of the Robot Taxi competition in December, the club of companies funding autonomy essentially shrinked to two: alphabet, Waymo’s parent company and Google, and Amazon, Zoox parent.
In Phoenix, knights can order a Waymo through the Uber app, an arrangement that will soon come to Atlanta and Austin. In those two cities, Uber will also provide fleet management services such as cleaning and charging. The company receives a portion of income from each trip, likely between 10 and 20 percent, according to analyst estimates. (Mr. MacDonald declined to provide financial details of the partnership, but said they would evolve over time.)
The increased supply of vehicles in Uber and Lyft applications also cuts expectations and reduces costs for knights. And both companies already operate fleet management businesses, so getting those services for a partner like Waymo is appropriate, said Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Bird.
For customers, having robot taxi trips to an app like Uber or Lyft is a draw in itself. “This is the biggest benefit for us,” Mr. Bird said. “Only diversifying the types of options that knights have on the platform.”
But the value of a Uber partnership for Waymo becomes less clear in a city like San Francisco, where the demand for Waymos already exceeds supply.
Melissa Covarubias, a lawyer in Phoenix, now exclusively takes Waymo as an option for traveling, feeling safer and more comfortable after negative experiences with Uber and Lyft drivers, she said.
“And the interior of Waymo is so beautiful and luxurious, and you can choose your music,” she added.
Sean Campbell, also a lawyer in Phoenix, said Waymo had made his choice of traveling about 35 percent of the time, especially when he goes to work. But he uses Lyft to reach events like sports games or concerts, where Waymo would have to navigate large crowds.
“But for a night out, I always get Waymo,” said Mr. Campbell. “The thing with Waymo, beyond technology: it’s just fun.”
Uber’s relationship with Google, before Waymo dropped, had shocked beginnings. In 2016, Anthony Levandowski, a senior Google engineer, left the company and later became an executive at Uber. In 2020, he was convicted of stealing Google’s trading secrets, among other legal disputes between the two companies.
But Mr. Khosrowshahi, who took over as the executive chief of Uber 2017, reduced the relationship. In 2020, he handed over the autonomous division of Uber’s search to Aurora, which Uber then invested $ 400 million in.
“First we had to make peace with them and settle in court, and Cetera,” said Mr. Khosrowshahi for the New York Times in a last podcast. He added, “and then for a period of time, we built relationships.”
In response to questions about his partnership with Uber, a Waymo spokesman made a statement from the company’s blog posting the expansion in Atlanta and Austin.
Uber profits calls have become a regular forum for analysts to Piper Mr. Khosrowshahi with questions about his autonomous strategy. While most analysts believe the company is on a promising path with its partnerships, robot taxis pose a “great danger or opportunity for Uber”, said Nikhil Devnani, an analyst in Bernstein. “I think the market is still trying to figure out which result it will be.”