Posted on 04/15/2026 9:22:37 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Uber has done its best to kill taxis, and now it's turning on drivers — starting with the drivers on its own app. The company is putting $10 billion into buying either robotaxi fleets or stakes in robotaxi companies, in hopes of cutting those pesky drivers out of its profit margins. From Reuters:
Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying thousands of autonomous vehicles and taking stakes in their developers, breaking from its asset-light "gig economy" business model to avoid disruption from robotaxis, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Uber did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Uber is positioning itself as a marketplace for multiple robotaxi operators, and has partnered across much of the autonomous vehicle industry, including with, Baidu, Rivian and Lucid, and has outlined plans to launch robotaxi services in at least 28 cities by 2028.
These deals put Uber on track to invest more than $2.5 billion in equity stakes and spend over $7.5 billion on robotaxi fleets in the next few years, FT reported citing their calculations based on analyst estimates and people familiar with Uber's deals. The agreements are contingent on its partners hitting certain deployment milestones.
Between Uber and Waymo, we may soon reach a point where we can hire a rideshare without a cent of our fare ever having to go to a real human person. Won't that be nice? When no one can afford groceries any more, because we've all been made redundant by the companies that built their profits on our labor?
... more than 1 hour a week...”
,,, they'll dump call centre employees with AI systems being used.
the first time a robotaxi wipes out a bus full of nuns, the company that owns it be bankrupted ...
In other news, Democrats have introduced a bill which would designate robocars as employees, and automatically include them in collective bargaining.
The real problem is that if, like happened to my wife and me today, you get a minor fault with something like an IAC sensor. The self-driving robot car just stops. Because I was a human, I could get home even with the surging idle.
I saw a number of Waymos in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles when I was there last year.
****
ABC News just showed a Tesla autodriving through the lowered gate of a RR crossing.
Wwweeeelllll...
...it’s not as if it’ll pose a risk of making Uber drivers WORSE.
Working through a pack of slower traffic on the highway, I invariably come up behind a car with an UBER sticker on it perpetuating the logjam.
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