Is Waymo Friend or Foe to Uber?
The fast expansion of Waymo’s driverless car service is growing competition for Uber. The companies are also partners.
The fast expansion of Waymo’s driverless car service is growing competition for Uber. The companies are also partners.
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.
