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(Text/Zhang Jiadong Editor/Gao Xin)

Since the beginning of this year, as Tesla announced that it would abandon the research and development of low-cost electric vehicles in the short term and instead enter the field of Robotaxi (self-driving taxis), the outside world's attention to Robotaxi has once again risen.

According to US automotive media electrek, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of overseas ride-hailing giant Uber, recently stated that Tesla underestimated the complexity of establishing a fleet of self-driving taxis.

Tesla ride-hailing app electrek

In fact, due to the decline in Tesla's global sales this year, the capital market's expectations for the prospects of Tesla's passenger car products have dropped significantly compared to the beginning of the year.

However, compared with autonomous driving companies such as Waymo and Cruise that have already started large-scale testing on US roads, although Tesla has a large passenger car user group and pioneering autonomous driving technology, it lacks a large number of test samples in the field of autonomous driving. When Tesla announced the launch of Robotaxi, the focus of outside attention was often on the technology supporting its autonomous driving.

Uber CEO's targeting of Tesla this time is based on the commercial operation dimension of Robotaxi.

Tesla Robotaxi's "three major flaws"

In recent years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has told users more than once that its autonomous driving technology will be able to help its millions of car owners join the Robotaxi service operated by Tesla in the future.

He also described a scenario where the owner drives to work while their Tesla car performs driverless service. According to Musk, this service plan can provide owners with up to $30,000 (about 215,000 yuan) in income per year.

Although Musk's plan is indeed disruptive and innovative in concept, in terms of actual operation, Khosrowshahi directly pointed out the "three major flaws" of Tesla's plan.

knowtechie

First, the travel service industry itself has a strong periodicity in vehicle usage, he said, "When you want to use Tesla Robotaxi, it is likely that the owner himself needs the car." This also means that at the peaks and troughs of the vehicle usage cycle, the demand for service vehicles and personal vehicles overlaps.

This will also significantly reduce the attractiveness of additional income for car owners, while traditional travel platforms such as Uber will be able to adjust the demand and allocation balance of drivers, vehicles, etc. through a complete backend mechanism.

Second, unlike the mature leasing model in the European market, Khosrowshahi believes that in most markets, ordinary Tesla owners will face the choice of "whether they are willing to let strangers on the Internet use their vehicles." In addition, the legal provisions and operating systems between different states in the US market have not yet been unified, and it is very difficult to establish a unified Robotaxi mechanism in the US travel market.

Third, in addition to the obstacles at the policy level, it is not easy for Tesla to build a Robotaxi service infrastructure with its own size. Khosrowshahi said, "We must learn to build a system that satisfies both passengers and drivers. Uber spent 15 years and invested tens of billions of dollars."

In his view, Tesla's current focus on automobiles, smart driving technology, AI, new energy and other fields are far from the travel service itself. "Building a $50,000 piece of hardware (such as a car) is a 'very different business' compared to driving more than 30 million transactions a day," Koslowski added.

Of course, Uber CEO's words were not aimed at Tesla's self-driving technology itself, but were based on the travel service model. As a travel company, Uber may also hope to avoid a "customer" turning into its competitor.

Rejected Uber and market demand

From Khosrowshahi's final supplementary statement, it can be seen that he hopes to reach a cooperation with Tesla. "Autonomous driving is the development direction of NIO. I hope Tesla can become one of our partners."

In short, Tesla's huge market share will undoubtedly help Uber bring more room for imagination on the business side. In Uber's recently released second-quarter financial report, the company achieved revenue of US$10.7 billion (about RMB 76.7 billion), an increase of 16% over the same period last year.

Khosrowshahi said that in the quarter ending June 30, the company had 156 million monthly active users, and the average number of bookings by these users set a new record, showing unprecedented consumer demand. In addition, Uber also revealed that the company is actively conducting in-depth "final stage negotiations" with a number of self-driving car companies around the world, aiming to incorporate these companies' self-driving vehicles into its service platform and further enrich its travel ecosystem.

The market has demand and Tesla has products that meet the demand, so Uber naturally does not want to give up such a good opportunity.

According to Fortune magazine, Khosrowshahi approached Musk about cooperating to build Robotaxi, but was rejected by Musk. Subsequently, Tesla announced its own driverless taxi plan and issued a ban, announcing that users were prohibited from joining Uber's commercial autonomous driving network.

Tesla has not responded to Khosrowshahi's comments, and there has been no update on its Robotaxi plan since it was announced in July.

But Electrek, in its report, endorsed Khosrowshahi's statement, commenting that Uber's value lies in its ability to adjust prices based on demand and supply. This is bad news for Tesla owners who rely on this income, but not necessarily for Tesla.

Commentator Mike said: "Anyone who thinks they can get rich from a self-driving taxi service is fooling themselves. Even if we ignore all the technical obstacles and legal issues. If this technology existed today and was profitable, do you think Tesla would really let customers share in it?"

Is Tesla a good choice?

It is worth mentioning that if Tesla still fails to showcase its Robotaxi prototype as scheduled two months later, Uber may have to be the party that is glad that it failed to reach a cooperation.

When Tesla launched the Robotaxi plan in April this year, Wall Street analysts and Tesla investors pointed out that Tesla was not a frontrunner in this field. Baidu's driverless taxi project "Robot Run", Alphabet's driverless taxi project Waymo, and General Motors' Cruise were already ahead of it and were conducting orderly commercialization trials.

Tesla demonstrates FSD technology Tesla official website

Tesla's delay in July was also expected by the outside world. In response, Musk said on social media that it was due to the need to change the design of the prototype car. However, the outside world is undoubtedly more inclined to interpret it as Tesla facing some engineering and regulatory obstacles on the road to developing Robotaxi and autonomous driving systems.

In other words, any travel company planning to develop Robotaxi vehicles must first consider whether the autonomous driving technology is easy to use and whether it can be put on the road.

Tesla may be the first and fastest end-to-end driver in this regard, but it is still too early to achieve L4 autonomous driving, or even for the vehicle to take orders and complete travel tasks. After all, Tesla's current number of accidents in L2 autonomous driving is not small.

In fact, even those commercial autonomous driving manufacturers who are more focused and have started earlier than Tesla have not been able to fully implement the commercialization route of Robotaxi.

For example, Cruise, which was suspended last year for "running over pedestrians" in California, and Carrot Run, which has been piloted in pilot areas in many cities in China for many years, still need drivers behind the scenes. The difficulty in achieving intelligent unmanned driving of a single vehicle means that there must be a powerful travel platform or even a technology platform behind it to monitor the product.

For Uber or Tesla, before they can realize their Robotaxi plans, the implementation of technology is only the first step in starting commercial operations. How to boost public acceptance and how to win more benefits for themselves on the policy side are also difficult problems facing Robotaxi.

As a travel company that introduced Robotaxi as early as 2015 and caused the first serious personal injury accident involving L4 autonomous driving, Uber's past experience is enough to serve as a warning. This time, the radical and uncertain Tesla is probably not a good choice for Uber to fight again in Robotaxi.

This article is an exclusive article of Observer.com and may not be reproduced without authorization.