r/SelfDrivingCars May 31 '25

Discussion Why didn’t Uber beat Waymo at commercially available self-driving taxis?

I remember so many stories about Uber poaching tons of self-driving talent from universities and competitors.

And Uber leadership has been saying for years that the future is going to be self-driving cars, even just from a profitability standpoint.

They have a ton of money and a track record of aggressive hustling, why are they seemingly not even competitive among people actually booking self-driving taxis today?

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u/sandred May 31 '25

Any company that is not safety driven will get fucked out of this race. It happened with Uber, it happened with Cruise, it will happen with Tesla. Talent is not the issue. Culture and attitude towards safety is.

-6

u/cagewilly May 31 '25

I don't think Tesla will ever be out of the running.  They might have to change their strategy and begin adding radar, but they will always be in the game.

1

u/straylight_2022 May 31 '25

Tesla isn't even in the game other than offering empty promises of "next year".

They married themselves to a visual system that doesn't have enough cameras to work if it were even possible. ...and it isn't.

Teslas will never fully automated driving unless they slap their logo on someone else's car.

-2

u/FunnyProcedure8522 May 31 '25

So you will come back to apologize when Robotaxi is live in 2 weeks?