It’s relatively easy to follow. Leading is difficult and risky. But if you take a chance and work like hell, the payoff can be huge.
Uber is learning this lesson right now as it scrambles to catch up in autonomous vehicle technology.
The ride-hailing company has recently rattled off six major deals related to autonomous technology. That shows how fast Uber is trying to move right now.
But did you know that Uber had a substantial driverless car project more than a decade ago? That’s right. It launched in early 2015 when Travis Kalanick was CEO. At the time, Uber was a real contender, racing against Waymo and Tesla.
Then, disaster struck. While testing in Arizona in 2018, an Uber driverless car, with a safety driver behind the wheel, hit and killed a pedestrian. It was the tragedy that the nascent industry had nightmares about, and it sadly came true.
By then, Kalanick had been ousted in favor of a steadier hand, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Khosrowshahi canceled Uber’s driverless car program and sold off the bits. At the time, this was part of making Uber a more serious company ahead of an IPO that eventually happened in 2019.
Things went pretty well for a while after that. Uber’s market share in the US steadily rose, while Lyft struggled. Healthy profitability followed, and Uber’s stock climbed strongly.
Lately, all that hard work by Waymo and Tesla has begun to pay off. Autonomous vehicles have finally gotten good. I have used Tesla’s full self-driving software regularly, and it’s incredible. Waymo’s AVs now regularly compete with Uber’s human-driven ride-hailing network for riders in San Francisco.
Investors have noticed, punishing Uber stock over the past few months for being a potential AV laggard. Tesla and Waymo are building their own autonomous ride services, which threaten Uber.
On Thursday, I asked Mark Mahaney, a top tech analyst at Evercore ISI, whether, with hindsight, Uber should have stuck with its original autonomous vehicle project all those years ago. It might not be scrambling to catch up now, in theory.
“Not a bad interpretation,” he told me. “Depends on how much conviction they had in their technology stack.”
This goes back to my original point. Eleven years ago, autonomous vehicles were not a sure thing. I rode in early Google driverless cars in 2014. They were solid, but the many edge cases were not ironed out. That led to doubts about whether this technology would ever be good enough to build a business around.
This is the very moment that true technologists with deep knowledge can make visionary bets on the future. Google and Tesla bravely stuck with AVs. They now reap the rewards by being many years ahead of the competition.
Now, Uber is left rushing to get back in the game. Just in the last two months, here’s what it announced:
- A $1.25 billion partnership with Rivian that gives Uber access to the EV company’s future autonomous-driving technology.
- A Zoox-Uber partnership: Zoox selected Uber as its first external rideshare partner beyond its own app.
- A Wayve-Uber-Nissan partnership: Pilot deployment in Tokyo (late 2026) using Nissan Leaf electric vehicles powered by Wayve’s AI Driver technology.
- A Motional (Hyundai joint venture) partnership: Uber riders in Las Vegas now have access to Motional’s IONIQ 5 robotaxi (with a safety driver), with full autonomy targeted for the end of 2026.
- An Uber-Nvidia partnership: Uber plans to deploy a global fleet of Nvidia software-driven AVs, with initial rollout in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the first half of 2027 and scaling to 28 cities by 2028.
- A Waabi investment: Uber participated in Waabi’s Series C with a $250 million commitment, alongside plans to deploy 25,000 Waabi-powered AVs.
In what would be the ultimate irony, there are even reports that Uber may be considering backing Kalanick’s new autonomous vehicle effort.
Actually doing fully autonomous vehicles properly and catching Tesla and Waymo at this point is a whole other thing. But Uber has clearly changed its mind about AVs.
I asked Uber’s press department about all this on Thursday. Any regrets? It did not immediately respond.
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