In 2020, Uber was at a crossroads: the company had made a expensive bet on the taxis of the robots, but the project was full of legal problems and burning in cash. So Uber gave it to another start-up.
But five years later, Uber’s future seems to be linked to autonomous vehicles as always. The company is now betting that it can embrace the driver without driver without spending money to build them, at risk of being exceeded by the companies that do it.
In recent months, Uber has doubled on what he calls his “platform strategy”, collaborating with taxi robot companies like Waymo. In Phoenix, cyclists can order a Waymo car via the Uber and Austin app in Texas, Waymo’s taxi robotes soon wear the Uber logo. The giant who spent the trip now has 15 autonomous partnerships for vehicles, from Waymo to international companies such as Weride and delivery services of autonomous foods such as having.
But those partners are also competitors. In December, when Waymo said he was expanding to Miami without a Uber partnership, Uber actions collapsed 9 percent. And Waymo’s expansion is far from over: last month, the company announced that she would test its vehicles in 10 new cities this year.
The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, declared last week that his company would have had autonomous driving taxi on the roads of Austin in June. He had made similar forecasts for years for years when Tesla vehicles would have been able to drive themselves, but the experts in the sector say that it is most likely only a matter of time before his company keeps his promise.
For Uber, the question is if it will ride or will be hit by the expansion of the driver without driver. “Nobody is exactly sure who will be the winning technology,” said Tom White, senior research analyst with the financial company from Davidson. “So everyone holds their potential enemies close.”
On Wednesday morning, Uber said that in his last quarter, his gross reservations, an important measure of the company’s activity, grew by 18 % compared to the previous year, which was higher than what Wall Street investors They expected. Uber revenues increased by 20 % to $ 12 billion, even exceeding Wall Street’s expectations. Uber also beat expectations for net profit thanks to $ 7 billion of tax benefits.
Wall Street analysts asked Uber managers of his vision of the taxi robot market in a telephone conference on Wednesday morning.
“The first markets that will be penetrated will depend on the regulation,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. “I think that in the next five years, the addressable market will probably be in order from 10 to 15 percent of the overall market.”
In 2010, the hype around autonomous vehicles “probably worked in front of technology,” said Andrew MacDonald, Uber’s Senior Vice President of Mobility in an interview. “Now it’s starting to turn over.”
It is difficult to say if Waymo has cut Uber’s business, even in the city like San Francisco, where Waymo’s cars can be described fairly as a traditional transport option. (Mr. Khosrowshahi said that robot taxis did not influence Ubers’ question.)
Lyft, Uber’s best rival, has adopted an approach similar to taxi robotes, announcing three autonomous partnerships alone since November, with other works.
The value of taxi robotes in Uber and Lyft is clear: human work is one of their greatest costs. Companies also imagine a future when people acquire robot taxis to be used as personal vehicles and, in the hours of Offs, rent them with transport networks, said Jeremy Bird, head of the autonomous experience of Lyft.
But for now, robots taxis are more expensive than they are profitable and require a huge amount of capital to develop. After General Motors, the owner of Cruise, has extended from the competition of taxi robot in December, the club of the companies that finance the race for autonomy essentially reduced to two: Alphabet, the mother company of Waymo and Google e Amazon, parent of Zoox.
In Phoenix, cyclists can order a Waymo through the Uber app, an agreement coming to Atlanta and Austin. In these two cities, Uber will also provide fleet management services such as cleaning and charging. The company takes part of the revenue of each lap, probably between 10 and 20 percent, according to analysts’ estimates. (Mr. MacDonald refused to provide financial details of the partnership but said they would evolve over time.)
The increase in the supply of vehicles on the Uber and Lyft apps also reduces expectations and reduces costs for cyclists. And both companies already manage fleet management activities, so it is convenient to take control of those services for a partner like Waymo, MacDonald and Bird said.
For consumers, having taxi robot on an app like Uber or Lyft is a draw itself. “This is the greatest advantage for us,” Bird said. “Just diversify the types of options that cyclists have on the platform.”
But the value of a Uber partnership for Waymo becomes less clear in a city like San Francisco, where Waymos’s demand already exceeds the offer.
Melissa Covarrubias, Phoenix’s lawyer, now takes Waymo as a racing option, feeling safer and more comfortable after negative experiences with Uber and Lyft drivers, he said.
“And the interior of Waymo is so beautiful and luxurious and you can select your music,” he added.
Sean Campbell, also a lawyer in Phoenix, said Waymo had become his racing choice around 35 % of the time, especially when he went to work. But use Lyft to get to events such as sports games or concerts, where Waymo should navigate with big crowds.
“But for an evening outside, I always take Waymo,” said Campbell. “The thing with Waymo, beyond technology: it’s simply fun.”
Uber’s relationship with Google, before Waymo was shot, had tumultuous beginnings. In 2016, Anthony Levandowski, one of Google’s best engineer, left the company and later became a Uber manager. In 2020, he was sentenced for stealing Google’s commercial secrets, among other legal disputes between the two companies.
But Mr. Khosrowshahi, who hired the office of Uber CEO 2017, repaired the report. In 2020, he handed over Uber’s autonomous research division to Start-up Aurora, in which Uber then invested $ 400 million.
“First we had to make peace with them and settled in court, etc.,” Khosrowshahi said to the New York Times on a recent podcast. He added: “And then for a period of time, we built relationships”.
In response to the questions about his partnership with Uber, a Waymo spokesman provided a declaration of the post on the blog of the company that announced the expansion to Atlanta and Austin.
Uber users have become a normal forum for analysts to pepper Mr. Khosrowshahi with questions about his autonomous strategy. While most analysts believe that the company is on a promising track with its partnerships, the robot taxis have a great “risk or opportunities for Uber”, said Nikhil Devnani, Bernstein’s analyst. “I think the market is still trying to understand what result it will be.”