Uber is preparing for a robotaxi surge, and its CEO says one market will drive it.
Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with Bloomberg Television published Friday that robotaxis are a “trillion-dollar-plus” opportunity and Asia is a huge growth market for the ride-hailing giant.
“I expect to be in 10-plus markets by next year. And we want those markets to be in the Asia-Pacific region as well,” Khosrowshahi said. Uber has self-driving vehicles in the US and the Middle East.
Analysts have long touted autonomous mobility as one of the biggest bets in the transportation industry. In 2023, McKinsey estimated that if robotaxis and roboshuttles scale, the shared-mobility market could reach $1 trillion by 2030.
Khosrowshahi said Japan has “great potential” for its robotaxi push, despite being behind in regulation.
“With an aging population, there’s a real need for transportation, not just in the large cities but in the rural areas,” he added. He also pointed to Hong Kong and Australia as potential key markets for its robotaxi services.
Khosrowshahi said Uber now works with more than 20 autonomous-vehicle partners — including China’s Baidu, WeRide, and Pony.ai, as well as Waymo in the US.
“We will have access to autonomous technologies in the large cities and markets that really count,” he added.
With a market that large, Khosrowshahi said autonomous driving is unlikely to be a “winner-take-all” industry.
“It’s an exciting technology, but there are many players getting to the finish line,” he said.
“We just have to make sure that the players that we work with are safe and that again, we’re working with the regulators in a constructive manner,” he added.
The hype around robotaxis
Uber has been leaning hard into autonomous driving. During its third-quarter earnings call in November, Khosrowshahi said the company is already seeing signs that robotaxis can boost demand.
“The biggest scale operations that we’ve got are with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta,” Khosrowshahi said. “And what we are seeing is that those markets are growing faster than other US markets,” he added.
Other industry leaders have also been hyping the sector.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly said that robotaxis will power the company’s growth. In May, Musk said in an interview with CNBC that Tesla would hit one million self-driving cars by the end of next year, a claim he also made in 2019 that did not materialize.
The path to profitability remains murky. HSBC analysts warned in July that the robotaxi market has been “widely overestimated,” and said it could be years before fleets make real money.
Even the most advanced players are burning cash. Alphabet’s “Other Bets” division — which includes Waymo, as well as other subsidiaries — lost $1.42 billion in the third quarter.
The cost of an autonomous driving vehicle is steep. Analysts estimate that each Waymo vehicle costs about $150,000 to produce. The high costs have squeezed some companies out of the robotaxi market, including Ford and General Motors.
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