On April 15, according to a report by the Financial Times, the US online ride-hailing giant Uber committed to investing more than US$10 billion to purchase thousands of self-driving cars and become a shareholder in their developers, deviating from its asset-light "gig economy" business model to avoid being impacted by the wave of self-driving taxis.
Uber
In the past year,Uber has significantly accelerated its transaction layout, announcing partnerships with more than a dozen suppliers, including China's Baidu and the United States' Rivian, and plans to launch self-driving taxi services in at least 15 cities in 2026.
The deals will see Uber invest more than $2.5 billion in equity investments over the next few years and spend more than $7.5 billion building a fleet of self-driving taxis, according to Financial Times calculations based on analyst estimates and people familiar with the matter. These agreements are premised on partners reaching specific self-driving vehicle deployment points.
For Uber, a company that emerged from Silicon Valley and has long been regarded as a representative of the "gig economy", these investments are a significant strategic shift. The company disrupted the taxi industry by pioneering an asset-light model that relied on drivers using their own vehicles to transport passengers.
Tuesday,Electric car maker Lucid said Uber has expanded a previous agreement between the two parties to invest a total of $500 million in the company and purchase at least 35,000 Lucid vehicles, which may cost Uber at least $2 billion.
Own a fleet
Walter Piecyk, an analyst at venture capital firm LightShed Partners, believes that Uber's recent large investment in self-driving taxis is "the first step in a complete change in the narrative" of its business. "I think they are slowly getting people to accept the concept of Uber having its own fleet," he said.
Currently, Uber is trying to regain lost ground in the self-driving taxi race.The company sold its autonomous vehicle unit for $4 billion in 2020 to focus on improving profitability.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has since pledged to invest more than twice the deal amount in self-driving taxi providers from Silicon Valley to Beijing to London, totaling more than the company’s $9.8 billion in free cash flow last year.
"We are investing money to secure the future supply of self-driving taxis," Khosrowshahi told investors in February. "A large portion of that supply will be based on a profitable economic model... We will continue to make these types of commitments."
Tesla is operating its own self-driving taxi app.Khosrowshahi has previously said that Tesla's negotiations with Uber failed to make progress because Tesla "wants to build its own self-driving taxi network alone."
However, Khosrowshahi has warned that although self-driving taxis are considered a "trillion-dollar opportunity", they are not yet large enough to have a material impact on the company.
"In the past year, the increase in travel orders on Uber was 50 times the increase in the entire self-driving car industry," he previously said. "We are very confident that we will become the preferred partner for self-driving car manufacturers and technology companies."