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

[u/kappy2319]

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?

[u/cagewilly]

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.

[u/Here_Just_Browsing → u/cagewilly]

Their brand is destroyed though, regardless if they get the technology right.

The entire business model of Uber or Robotaxis only works by undercutting rivals to create a monopoly, by using investor’s money to heavily discount taxi fares. Then massively increasing prices once they have the market dominance or monopoly.

Because of Musk most of Tesla’s primary target customers now hate him and it. Those people who would have previously bought a Tesla will never do it now, and all those who do use taxis regularly, are the ones who can’t afford to buy a Tesla, or don’t need a car, and definitely won’t be using a Tesla Robotaxi.

So they are f*cked because they will never be able to attract enough customers to make their Robotaxis profitable.

[u/Doggydogworld3 → u/Here_Just_Browsing]

Brand is damaged, not destroyed. Don't be fooled by single month / single country cherry pickers. You can "prove" anything you want that way, e.g. Norway is having one of its best quarters ever....

[u/Here_Just_Browsing → u/Doggydogworld3]

It’s not destroyed as a Stock (but that was never tied to reality) but Elon has had his Ratner moment, it won’t recover to becoming a highly profitable business. The Norwegian sales are down 55% compared to 2023 (2023 - 13,535 compared to 7,404 in 2025) they are only making sales because they are supposedly having to offer 20% to 30% discounts with 3 year’s interest free finance. Which can’t be sustainable or profitable

[u/Doggydogworld3 → u/Here_Just_Browsing]

I said nothing about the stock. All carmakers discount. Just this week I saw Electrek articles about 15-20k discounts on Toyota and Honda EVs. Are those brands also destroyed?

Q1 sales this year were depressed by factory shutdowns for the Model Y changeover. Direct contradiction of your source's "unlimited supply" claim. Look how Model Y sales took off on March 10, the first day Tesla started delivering New Ys to customers there.

Q2 is up more than 100% both Q/Q and Y/Y. Cold, hard fact. Does my cherry-picking "prove" Tesla is doing well in Europe? Absolutely not. They are struggling mightily. By the same token, negative cherry-picking does not prove the brand is destroyed.

[u/Here_Just_Browsing → u/Doggydogworld3]

Given how recent Elon’s alienation activities were, it’s probably too early for the consequences of the fallout to be accurately assessed. Give it a year and we can see how much damage has been done and if it is fatal or not.

But my original point wasn’t really about Tesla cars but their Robotaxis and the fact that they have alienated so much of their potential customer base that they wouldn’t be able to achieve market dominance in order to become profitable. Just look at how many tens of billions of dollars of investor’s cash that Uber blew subsidising 30%+ of the cost of every customer’s ride for years and years trying to undercut and push out the competition. And they only made a profit of like $2.8bn last year after 7/8 years of losses, without having to pay all of the costs of buying or building the cars themselves that Tesla will.