Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi appeared on Friday’s episode of the “Hard Fork” podcast. Khosrowshahi said Elon Musk’s vision for Tesla Robotaxis is “very compelling.” Earlier this month, Musk announced the Tesla Robotaxi (dubbed CyberCab).
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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is interested in Tesla’s plans to introduce autonomous robotaxis.
Khosrowshahi recently appeared on the tech podcast Hardfork to discuss Uber’s position in the self-driving car industry.
Uber partnered with Waymo in 2023 to provide self-driving ride services to customers in Phoenix. The companies announced in September that they would expand into Atlanta and Austin in 2025. Waymo and Uber were once embroiled in a lawsuit over their self-driving technology, but reached a $245 million settlement in 2018.
The expansion comes as Waymo and Tesla compete to lead the self-driving car industry.
Uber announced a partnership with Waymo in 2023. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
In this episode, Khosrowshahi answered a question about whether he considers Tesla a competitor after the company’s “We, Robot” event this month. At the event, Musk unveiled Tesla’s robotaxi, called CyberCab, to the public for the first time. Despite the hype, former Waymo CEO John Krafcik and some Wall Street analysts were unimpressed.
Musk said the CyberCab will be in production by 2027.
“Well, that could certainly happen. If they decide to develop their own AV vehicle and use it directly through Tesla’s app only, they will become a competitor,” Khosrowshahi said. he said. “If they decide to work with us, we will be a partner as well.”
Khosrowshahi later described Musk’s vision as “pretty convincing.”
“There may be cyber shepherds and fleet owners,” he said. “These owners will want to put those vehicles on Uber if they want to get the most money out of them, but at this point it’s unclear what his intentions are. ”
Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s CyberCab at the “We, Robot” event in October. tesla
While Uber has positioned itself to partner with Waymo, Khosrowshahi said in an interview with the Financial Times earlier this month that he was open to partnering with Tesla.
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“We want to get it on the platform, but if we don’t, I don’t think this is going to be a winner-take-all market. We believe in the spirit of partnership. What Tesla does “Let’s see,” he said.
On the Hard Fork podcast, Khosrowshahi defended Waymo, saying he believes Waymo can beat Tesla.
“I think Elon will eventually reach a viable size, but for the next five years I’m betting on Waymo and we’re betting on Waymo,” he said.
This sentiment is somewhat at odds with what Andrej Karpathy, a founding team member at OpenAI and former senior director of AI at Tesla, said in a September episode of the podcast No Priors: Artificial Intelligence. Karpathy said he thinks Tesla has an advantage because Waymo has hardware issues while Musk’s company has software issues.
He said the latter would be easier to resolve, adding that Tesla could move forward in about 10 years.
Khosrowshahi talked about Waymo’s hardware on the Hard Fork podcast, saying, “I think the cost of hardware will scale down after a certain period of time. So yes, Waymo has hardware issues, but they’re can be resolved.”
Uber initially tried to go it alone, creating a self-driving car division called Advanced Technologies Group. However, the company faced a series of setbacks, including a fatal crash in 2018, leading to the sale of the unit to self-driving car startup Aurora in 2020.
Representatives for Uber did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.
