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RESEARCH: Will Travis Kalanick become Head of Robotaxi?
The history and also current CEO remarks give us clues.
Jaan Juurikas
July 02, 2024
Is Elon about to bring the co-founder of Uber to run the robotaxi network?
Hey, Jaan here.
Put on your tinfoil hats, this is a wild one.
I’ve so far gathered quite few hints that might be nothing, but also might be pieces of a robotaxi puzzle coming together in front of our eyes.
The robotaxi unveiling event is getting closer (8th of August!), and knowing how Elon operates, I assume there’s a frenzy going on at Tesla to make everything happen.
What happened: Just yesterday, Elon followed Travis Kalanick on X. We know, because our friend Jonas at @elon_alerts keeps us up to date:
Now why would Elon do that? Travis hasn’t posted anything since 2019.
Before we kick off, I want to note that I will not go into how Uber operates under the current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (2017-today), nor will I give my opinions on how it operated under Travis Kalanick (2009-2017). It’s a whole other rabbit hole I don’t want to jump into.
Let me piece together a bit of the historical context between Tesla and Uber:
In 2015, Travis said to Steve Jurvetson (then board member of Tesla):
“In 2020, if Teslas are autonomous, I want to buy all of them.
All 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I want them all.”
Jurvetson said Travis apparently couldn’t get a return call from Elon.
Fast forward just a bit, we got Travis Kalanick in 2016, explaining why he felt the urge to move:
"It starts with understanding that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous. So if that's happening, what would happen if we weren't a part of that future? If we weren't part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way.
If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing.”
In a book called “Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination”, we learn that after Apple invested $1B in Uber’s biggest rival Didi in China in 2016, Travis says he called up Elon Musk with a proposal to team up:
“I said, ‘Look man, we should partner’.
Elon spent the rest of the call convincing me that it’s too far out, and it’s not realistic, that I should just stick to what we [Uber] do best and be focused, or I’m going to f--- it all up. That’s when I knew Tesla was competing.”
Back in 2015’ish, Uber was already developing its own self-driving cars, with hundreds of scientists and engineers. But by late 2020, Uber sold off its driverless car subsidiary, Advanced Technologies Group, to Aurora Technologies.
Self-driving Uber Volvos in Pittsburg in the Uber garage (source: Travis Kalanick)
Does this mean Tesla will partner with Uber for robotaxi?
Probably not. But Tesla might take in Travis instead.
It is important to note, that Travis is no longer with Uber, for 7 years now, and has sold all his shares, after being ousted from the company in 2017. It’s a whole other story on its own which we won’t go into either (here’s a wiki page).
Considering how Travis wanted to sell Elon on doing Robotaxi x Uber seven years ago — and we’re now finally in a place where the tech would allow us to make it a reality — wouldn’t that make it a dream come true for Travis?
The question is, does Elon see Travis as useful too. Bringing in a visionary that built Uber and one who could see the autonomous vehicles coming in as strongly as he did 7 years ago?
That does sound like a good combo for the robotaxi wave.
So we’re talking of Travis potentially being hired (perhaps already?) as something like a Head of Robotaxi or a similar position, helping to build out the whole arm. Alternatively, he might just be brought on as an advisor or something similar.
Are Travis and Elon close?
I’ve searched widely, and have come up with just three connections between the two, if we exclude the phone call I mentioned above.
#1 Travis and Elon also sat together in then-President Trump’s advisory council in 2017, which both later quit. We don’t have much on Musk and Kalanick together other than something very recent:
#2 Elon reportedly hosted a dinner with David Sacks at Sacks’ house in Hollywood Hills this April, and Kalanick was reportedly also on the guest list. That gives us a very recent link between the two.
#3 And this is one is from 11 years ago, which could even be considered a bit funny in today’s circumstance (this one was hard to find):
Elon tweeted this out on March 10th, 2013: “Using Über to order a Tesla Model S at SXSW with @shervin and @travisk:”
This is also the only public photo we have of the two together (lower left).
What about Uber now?
Uber has partnered with Tesla as recently as January this year, but so far it’s all been about making the Teslas more accessible for Uber drivers, with incentives involved. Uber does, since mid-last year, use Tesla API data to show a range-based trip planner, scheduling rides based on the battery charge.
Per the Q1 press release, Uber also started sharing data to Tesla that illustrates where drivers need charging infrastructure the most.
On Uber and Robotaxis (AVs, as in Autonomous Vehicles), I think it has gone largely unnoticed what the CEO of Uber mentioned on the Uber Q1 Earnings Call when asked about Robotaxi competition incoming. Here’s the whole transcript and here’s the webcast.
current Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi
I’ve cut out some interesting parts for you:
First thing I would say is that we think that the AV technology at maturity is going to be very good for the industry. It will be great for Uber.
But really, what we bring is the systems that we put in place, the pricing, matching, routing algorithms, the payments systems that we have on a global basis as well as the demand that we bring that enables us to partner with these AV providers to really drive utilization of their assets, this is very expensive tech that's been developed over a long time.
And if you're an AV fleet owner or you are an individual owner of a car, whether that's a Tesla or another kind of car, you're just going to make more money and make a higher kind of return on your investment if you plug in your AVs into the Uber ecosystem into Uber demand.
So we think we bring lots to the table. We're looking to partner with the AV industry. I do think that there's a good amount of excitement over some of the newer technologies and kind of the imitation models that we see in terms of AV. And you see that promise with Tesla with FSD. It looks like a great product.
If you want to see Dara explain this on video, I also find him basically reiterating the same thing on Morning Brew’s interview, timestamped for you here:
“What we’re building is the largest demand network in the world, and a dispatch layer — that dynamically can decide, hey, for this ride, we should dispatch a person, for this other ride, we may dispatch a robot, etc — and put it all together in a safe, reliable, predictive way."
[…] I think we’re going to be more than fine. And I think there will be certain circumstances where users will want to use a proprietary network, you know, branded network, they may use Tesla, but I think because we bring most demand and because of all the systems that we built, we can be a big player in the space.
The part I put in bold seems to be the most specific thing Dara Khosrowshahi has said comparing the future of Uber to the future of Tesla robotaxi network.
Since Tesla will not be the only player in the world for autonomous taxis, at least not forever, the driving-demand play of Dara actually makes some sense.
Dara’s prediction (which he says it is guaranteed to be wrong): “In 7 to 10 years, more than 10% of our network is going to be robots of some kind.”
Now, we see the contrast between Dara and Travis. While Kalanick said back then that if we’re not first to solve AV, Uber is dead, Dara essentially says: we’ll win from this anyway because of what we already got, transition will take time, and AV players will want to partner with us to access our system and demand.
Will the demand be there forever if the underlying platform is Tesla? Now that’d depend on Tesla’s ambitions of becoming a ride-hailing service - or just offering the platform. Yet to be seen.
Watching how this all plays out will be wildly interesting. I really don’t want to use the word “disrupt” here.
My gut says Tesla does have the power to take over the business from Uber, if all goes right. But then again, would it? There’s always the card in the air of Tesla licensing FSD to other automakers, which in turn might lead them offer autonomous Uber rides through that. Or partnering directly.
What could be deemed certain, is that Tesla will profit either way: by becoming a major player in Uber’s market with its robotaxi and Tesla network — or by also giving Uber access to its autonomous capabilities.
Yet, the UBER CEO is selling his $UBER shares right now
Dara Khosrowshahi sold 1 million shares on June 17th (for $70.42M) in a pre-arranged plan, leaving him 1,266,114 shares of common stock and 250,000 shares from derivative securities.
That’s not nothing.
Meanwhile, $UBER is trading at around $143.8B market cap.
What will happen next?
Time will tell.
Next up, is the Tesla robotaxi event on 8/8. We’ll be watching.
You can remove your tinfoil hat now.
I’ll just leave this in the back of your mind: imagine Travis Kalanick joining Tesla and shutting down Uber within a few years. If so, that would make Kalanick kind of a genius considering the remarks he made back in 2015. And also, what a revenge would that be for him personally…
What do you think of all this?
Do tag us on X at @TheTeslaSpace with your opinion on X. And comment on this article below!
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I think it’s finally time for me to start watching Super Pumped.
See you next week,
— Jaan, Ted and Sean
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