During an earnings call last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the electric vehicle maker would start offering paid rides in June for its full self-driving robotaxi service. Now Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is making it clear that he doesn’t want to compete with Tesla — he wants to partner with the company to offer robotaxi rides through Uber’s ride-hailing platform.
“Listen, no one wants to compete against Tesla or Elon if you can help it,” Khosrowshahi told technology analyst Ben Thompson in an interview published in Thompson’s newsletter Statechery on Thursday. “Their capabilities are pretty extraordinary, but I think the same economic laws apply to them.”
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Khosrowshahi said that Tesla would benefit by allowing its robotaxis to offer rides through Uber. Instead of riders accessing the robotaxis solely through the Tesla app, they could tap into rides with the self-driving cars through Uber too.
Working with Uber could help maximize Tesla’s profits by expanding its reach. Uber completed an average of 33 million trips per day, according to the company’s latest earnings report.
“That is going to create much, much more revenue,” Khosrowshahi stated. “Ultimately that’ll increase the value of the Tesla so that the residual value of that car improves.”
Khosrowshahi added that if Tesla puts their robotaxis on Uber’s network, the self-driving cars would join 150,000 other Tesla vehicles on Uber today, adding to an established presence.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This isn’t the first time Khosrowshahi has indicated an interest in partnering with Tesla. In an interview with the Financial Times that aired in October, Khosrowshahi said that he would “love” to bring Tesla’s robotaxis to Uber when the technology was ready. He said that he aimed to collaborate with the autonomous industry, pointing to partnerships announced in late 2024 with Alphabet’s Waymo and Cruise.
Uber already has robotaxis on its app in certain areas through its partnerships, including Phoenix, Arizona, and Austin, Texas. The company put its own dreams of building a self-driving car to the side in 2020 when it sold its autonomous vehicle research division to self-driving startup Aurora.
Khosrowshahi told the Wall Street Journal last month that autonomous vehicles would take over Uber rides in the next 15 to 20 years, putting human Uber drivers out of work.
Khosrowshahi took over Uber in 2017, leading the company to its first annual operating profit in 2023. After reporting a loss of $1.8 billion in 2022, Uber reported an annual profit of $1.1 billion in 2023 and $2.8 billion in 2024.
