Uber CEO reveals Tesla is developing robotaxi platform entirely in-house

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has revealed Tesla will directly compete with his company after the former refused an offer of collaboration on its upcoming robotaxi service. As reported by Fortune, CEO Elon Musk and Khosrowshahi had multiple discussions, but the billionaire insisted the ride-hailing platform would be built completely in-house.

Khosrowshahi said, "I've had conversations with him at this point. They want to build it alone, so to some extent in Austin, we and Waymo will be competing with Tesla when they launch… Life is long, but we would love to partner with them."

Khosrowshahi talked up the strategic benefits of a potential launch partnership with Tesla. He said his company could guarantee demand for new entrants to the autonomous vehicle (AV) ecosystem, where demand can be variable.

Tesla has been making progress with its ride-hailing business. It revealed the mobile app interface for booking rides at an investor's call last year. The company is already dogfooding the service with its employees in California and Texas after unveiling the two-seat Cybercab with no steering wheel in October 2024. The autonomous car will be used to launch Unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) in June.