{"id":44614,"date":"2026-02-04T16:41:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ubers-ceo-is-betting-the-robotaxi-wars-wont-be-won-by-ride-hailing-alone\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T16:41:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:41:24","slug":"ubers-ceo-is-betting-the-robotaxi-wars-wont-be-won-by-ride-hailing-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ubers-ceo-is-betting-the-robotaxi-wars-wont-be-won-by-ride-hailing-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber&#8217;s CEO is betting the robotaxi wars won&#8217;t be won by ride-hailing alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/698355f8e1ba468a96ab5d42?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi smiles against a dark blue background while wearing a dark-colored sweater and sitting in front of a microphone.\"\/><figcaption>Deliveries could be a key part of making robotaxis work financially in the future, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Al Drago\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Deliveries could be key to making robotaxis work economically, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.<\/li>\n<li>Uber&#039;s food delivery and freight businesses could provide work to robotaxis, he said.<\/li>\n<li>Downtime is one of the challenges facing self-driving cars as they become more prevalent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Uber Eats might end up playing a key role in its parent company&#039;s robotaxi business, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.<\/p>\n<p>The ride-hailing app is working with multiple companies, such as Alphabet-backed Waymo, to make self-driving cars available through its app. Waymo&#039;s robotaxis have already proven more efficient than most human Uber drivers in cities such as Atlanta and Austin, Uber has said.<\/p>\n<p>One big question hanging over robotaxis, though, is what happens to the vehicles during times of the day when demand for rides is low, Khosrowshahi said on Uber&#039;s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>He pointed to one solution: Have them drive orders to customers through Uber&#039;s food delivery and freight businesses.<\/p>\n<p>Some delivery services, such as DoorDash, are also experimenting with robotaxis for food deliveries. Uber offers both ride-hailing and delivery, meaning robotaxis on its network could shift between the two as demand for each changes, Khosrowshahi said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Having delivery and freight as part of our logistics ecosystem gives us an opportunity to actually use these vehicles at a structurally higher utilization than anyone else,&quot; Khosrowshahi said.<\/p>\n<p>While ride-hailing accounted for over half of Uber&#039;s revenue in the fourth quarter, its delivery business grew by 29%, a faster clip than the 18% growth rate its ride-hailing segment posted in the same period.<\/p>\n<p>How efficiently companies use the autonomous vehicles that they put on the streets is one of the challenges hanging over the technology.<\/p>\n<p>Safety is another. Last month, a Waymo car injured a child near a school in Santa Monica, California, the latest in a series of accidents involving self-driving cars. Waymo said it is cooperating with a federal probe into the accident.<\/p>\n<p>While it doesn&#039;t operate self-driving cars directly, Uber is experimenting with ways to train the AI behind robotaxis using data it collects from human drivers, Khosrowshahi said. Uber has a partnership with Nvidia to collect that data, for instance. Last month, Uber said it would launch AV Labs, an arm focused on similar training efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Khosrowshahi said the goal is to make self-driving cars more reliable and avoid situations such as last year&#039;s Waymo blackout in San Francisco, when a power outage prompted the company to suspend services. &quot;The real world can create unexpected circumstances,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Robotaxis also require infrastructure to store, charge, and repair. Some companies, such as startup Voltera, are building depots for those purposes in anticipation of a robotaxi boom in the coming years.<\/p>\n<p><em>Have a tip? Contact this reporter at <\/em><em>abitter@businessinsider.com<\/em><em> or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device;<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/insider-guide-to-securely-sharing-whistleblower-information-about-powerful-institutions-2021-10\" rel=\"noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>here&#039;s our guide to sharing information securely<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deliveries could be a key part of making robotaxis work financially in the future, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Wednesday. Al Drago\/Getty Images Deliveries could be key to making robotaxis work economically, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said. Uber&#039;s food delivery and freight businesses could provide work to robotaxis, he said. Downtime is one of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}