Uber and Tesla On Collision Course Over Robo-Taxis

Uber’s top executive says Elon Musk is unwilling to make Tesla’s planned robo-taxis available on Uber’s ride-hailing platform.

Uber and Alphabet-owned Waymo are currently collaborating on a robo-taxi service in Phoenix and announced in September that they would expand to Austin and Atlanta in early 2025. I Photo: Business Wire

“They want to build it alone, so to some extent in Austin, we and Waymo will be competing with Tesla when they launch,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said at the FII conference in Miami, Andrew Nusca reported for Fortune’s Data Sheet.

Uber and Alphabet-owned Waymo are currently collaborating on a robo-taxi service in Phoenix and announced in September that they would expand to Austin and Atlanta in early 2025, using all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk pledged to investors last month that Tesla would launch its own robo-taxi service in Austin in June, using self-driving-equipped consumer models (such as the Model 3 and Model Y) rather than the Cybercab it announced in October.

Several key factors influence the Texas ventures. For Uber, investor pressure on its human driver-heavy business model has pushed the company (along with rival Lyft) to pursue an autonomous future.

Uber has engaged in multiple partnerships and made strategic investments to accelerate this transition.

For Tesla, skepticism remains over whether the company can fulfill its ambitious promises—Musk previously claimed there would be one million robo-taxis on the road by 2020. Questions persist regarding Tesla’s ability to deliver fully functional self-driving technology and generate sufficient demand to sustain the service.

“We estimate that the U.S. market alone represents a trillion-dollar opportunity as autonomous vehicles scale and unit economics improve,” Khosrowshahi said in a call with investors earlier this month.

And when that happens? “You're going to see many, many more players cross the finish line.”