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In 2020, Uber was at a crossroads: The company had made an expensive bet on robot taxis, but the project was laden with legal problems and burning through cash. So Uber gave it away to another start-up.
But five years later, Uber’s future seems as tied to autonomous vehicles as ever. The company is now betting that it can embrace driverless taxis without spending money to build them — at the risk of being overtaken by the companies that do.
In recent months, Uber has doubled down on what it calls its “platform strategy,” teaming up with robot taxi companies like Waymo. In Phoenix, riders can order a Waymo car through the Uber app, and in Austin, Texas, Waymo’s robot taxis will soon don the Uber logo. The ride-hailing giant now has 15 autonomous vehicle partnerships, from Waymo to international companies like WeRide and autonomous food delivery services like Avride.
But those partners are also competitors. In December, when Waymo said it was expanding into Miami without an Uber partnership, Uber’s stock tumbled 9 percent. And Waymo’s expansion is far from over: Last month, the company announced that it would test its vehicles in 10 new cities this year.
Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said last week that his company would have self-driving taxis on the roads of Austin in June. He had made similar predictions for years about when Tesla vehicles would be able to drive themselves, but industry insiders say it is most likely only a matter of time before his company makes good on his promise.
For Uber, the question is whether it will ride on or get run over by the driverless taxi expansion. “No one is exactly sure who’s going to be the winning technology,” said Tom White, a senior research analyst with the financial firm D.A. Davidson. “So everyone is keeping their potential enemies close.”
On Wednesday morning, Uber said that in its most recent quarter, its gross bookings, an important measure of the company’s business, grew 18 percent from a year earlier, which was higher than Wall Street investors had expected. Uber’s revenue increased 20 percent to $12 billion, also higher than Wall Street expectations. Uber also beat expectations for net income thanks to $7 billion in tax benefits.
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