Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on self-driving's future, changing business model, job displacement

0:01The driving force behind one of America's most influential companies. I could hide it for Uber 100 % off last year. Waymo and Uber have announced a partnership when you have a CEO that's dumb where Dara has done. You set the bar higher and higher. The impact we have on society is significant. We hope to keep building on that impact going forward and I'm quite optimistic about what the future is going to bring. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. Uber CEO Dara Kazer Shahi.

0:34How are you?

0:40All right. Dara, I wasn't sure if you were aware, but I was an early investor in Uber. I've heard you say it once or twice. And I'm curious how my investment is doing. I don't know. Okay, based on today. Today's looking pretty good. So, autonomy is the discussion. I think everybody works to have in the timeline. How many partners does Uber have in autonomy today? So, we have over 20 partners across both mobility and the delivery business. I'd say mobility now is in the field as we speak. Obviously, we've got a partnership with Waymo who is, I think the best of the best in Atlanta and Austin, but there are a number of other players that we are partnered with.

1:32The number of Chinese players, autonomy in China is hitting the big time and a lot of these companies that want to expand outside of China we're partnering with. And then in the US, even in the second half of this year, we will have a couple of partnerships kind of hit the road in Texas and then in Europe and the rest of the world. So you will see, we've announced a bunch of partnerships, we're doing a ton of work with these partners, you'll see these cars hit the road with safety drivers eventually and that safety drivers will come out this year and then especially going to next year, we're going to have significant number of cars on the road.

2:06How many people in China have level four no safety driver today? And what's your assessment of those companies and their safety record? You know, it's a different market obviously. So there are a by -do we ride pony are all on the road today no safety driver We are partners with all of them their capabilities are Amazing you can imagine driving in China and these big cities is quite a complex undertaking They take safety just as seriously as The Western companies do so I think their safety record is excellent Ultimately, we think autonomous can be both superhuman in terms of safety and can save millions of lives over the course of time on the road and over a per -diet time as the cost of, especially the hardware stack comes down, we think that it can bring the cost of mobility down and make mobility on demand available to many, many more people than it is now.

3:08So it's gonna be a very big kind of market expander for us. So that was the debate, Dara, that maybe kind of exploded a little bit on X between you and Elon, where you guys, I mean very respectfully, just debating the pros and the cons. Maybe just set it up for the folks in the audience, the difference between Elon's approach and the Waymo approach, and maybe the relative pros and cons as you see it. Yeah, I mean, I think they're the ones building the cars. So I'm to some extent, a very, very, very interested bystander. But the way that I put it is, Elon's approach depends on excellent software to do a bunch of the heavy lifting.

3:51In that, there are some, you know, early on, whenever you're building product, there may be some cheat codes that you undertake. So for example, you could call it cheat codes or, you know, good engineering. some of the things you see in early systems is one is camera radar light hour so multiple sensors redundancy on the sensor stack to make sure that your perception algos are seeing the world as it really is. Elon is doing camera only tougher on the software cheaper for the hardware okay. Second I would say big difference is many of the players use HD maps and what HD maps do is essentially you map out an area so that it's much easier for the software to determine what are permanent aspects of a certain view.

4:42You know, the lines on the road, traffic lights, etc. Because of the HD maps, it's very, very easy for that piece of software to determine what's permanent and then what's impermanent vehicles, people, etc. So it makes a job of the software much easier to figure out what's going on and then and then determine what to do. Elonser Proc doesn't depend on HD maps and again it makes it drop a software harder. And then the other I would say significant factor is the compute. So when you look at the compute in many of the other players, the compute in terms of and memory, et cetera, in the back of the car.

5:25Car is pretty expensive, pretty extensive. And I think Tesla's approach is with a much tighter compute stack. Do you see a world where you try to pour your distribution into all those solutions, assuming that everybody's amenable to working with you? And it meets your threshold for what you're looking for. Yeah, I think safety or cost or? Exactly. I'd say safety comes number one. So we have a certain safety case that we want to make sure that our partners are here to or exceed. And it's just about, is that an e -vow or is that like, is that certain rates that they have to publish to you or how do they demonstrate to you?

6:03It's the technical approach and the e -vow together. And listen, it is a dialogue, right? Because different people take different approaches to safety. We want to make sure that if it's showing up on the Uber platform, it is as safe as it can be. on our different definition of safety is multiple time safer than a human being, which is achievable, way more showing that it's achievable, many of the Chinese players are showing that it's achievable as well. So if it reaches our safety criteria and the economics are attractive and the economics as the cost of hardware comes down, you know, LiDAR was 20 ,000, 30 ,000 bucks a pop like five, six years ago, now the Nile Solidar is 300 to 500 bucks a pop.

6:46So the cost of hardware is coming way down. It is going to need to continue to come down because these cars are very expensive. Then we'll do business with them. We want to be the platform and we want to essentially help the entire AV ecosystem thrive. And we think there's enough economics for the network player to have a great business and the software providers and the vehicle owners to have a great business. And then obviously there's fleet operations in terms of housing the cars, recharging the cars. You know, all of the kind of in the world work that's necessary as well. When you're going to get to a tipping point, I'm going to assume in driver miles, let's say, where one of the most interesting things that I thought of is, could you tell a city how it should actually be designed for optimal traffic.

7:44So we work, I wouldn't say for optimal traffic, I think theoretically it's possible, but you know, a Google, or something, yeah. Yeah, a Google could, there are lots of other players who can help with that, but we're certainly helping cities in terms of, where you should put charging infrastructure, for example, parking, drop -offs, et cetera, to help traffic flows. I think we can be a partner for cities and we do have a small operation where essentially we offer a data for free for cities To embark on city planning so to speak do they take it some do so I'm do some of the more sophisticated cities take it But I wouldn't call it a big part of our business So do I want to ask you about the the business model impact of Of basically robo taxis or self -driving in the old world Ubers network effect was a marketplace effect where you connected drivers and riders and if you had the most geographic density in an area then you could promise riders faster pickups and the drivers got higher utilization and that was a very powerful network effect but we're moving into a new world where anyone who has a fleet of self -driving cars in theory could just make them available to the public and start competing.

9:02How do you see that impacting and you have to go from being an asset light business to now owning all these cars and deploying them and is that a good thing or a bad thing for your business? So I think that the same economics apply, right? Which is if we have that fleet owner is not going to have as many vehicles available in a certain market, then let's say network like ours. And we will have a hybrid network. We're going to have humans and autonomous cars together. And that's going to continue for a while. You know, the autonomous of the machines are going to aren't going to replace all humans, at least for the physical future.

9:40So for us, if you're a part of our network, you are going to get more requests than the player who's doing a stand -alone because we already have the demand. The request is going to come from much closer. So instead of pick up who's 15 minutes away for a 10 minute ride, you're going to get a pick up that's three minutes away for a 10 minute ride. So the utilization in terms of the revenue generating miles as a percentage of total miles driven is much much higher on our network. So the player that, you know, if you have a free player A who's going direct, stand alone, a free player B who's working with us, a free player B will have much more business, who will have many more miles that are creating revenue as a percentage of the total miles driven.

10:29And as a result, each of their cars are going to get much more revenue per car per day than the fleet player who isn't working with us. So, I mean, that ultimately is, you know, even if you think about Uber Eats, right, there's this drama which is, hey, do you go direct only or do you work with a marketplace? And the fact is, every major food player McDonald's has a direct channel. But they have a box and they want that box to create as much revenue as possible. So they have a direct channel and they work through our marketplace, DoorDash Marketplace, other marketplaces as well because that's how you drive utilization.

11:06And so I think that most of these players, there are going to be some players like OEMO, like a Tesla who can build their direct channel. But we think if they want to drive maximum economics out of these really expensive cars for now, they're going to also want to work with us. Do you think you will need to buy and deploy your own fleets, or can you rely purely on third -party fleet owners? So I think that there's going to, ultimately, if you look at the end state, I think all of these cars are going to be financeable. So if you look, again, in the hotel business, I used to be in the travel business, a Hilton or a Marriott who's the brand doesn't own any other hotels.

11:45Those hotels are owned by financial -only players. And I think 10 years down the line, You know, there are these things called REITs, real estate investment trouts. You're gonna have fleets. You're gonna have Financial owners that own big fleets of cars that are on our network, maybe on other networks and the new enterprise kind of I'd say it's gonna be more financial players So it's not you know hurts an app enterprise are operators. Okay, these these are gonna be like pure Phenascal stones of the other world and they own fleets and they're just trying to monetize those fleets as much as possible So that's the end state.

12:19Between now and the end state, we will take balance sheet risk because we can sign up. We know exactly how much revenue a car can produce in said market because cars are already producing revenue. We can sign up for the revenue. We will prove out the business model. We'll use our balance sheet to prove out the business model. And then at some point, the whole thing is going to get financialized and we'll be out and take it off balance sheet. Is Waymo willing to work with you? Actually, Waymo is working with us now in Austin and Atlanta. So in Austin, Atlanta, if you're using Uber, you can be picked up with a Waymo.

12:58Our customers love it. Is it the driverless aspect of it that they love? You know, there. So the prime is saving you that. I think one is their new car is their really nice cars. It's kind of freaking cool. Yeah, and you do have privacy in that car as well So I think the combination of it works out really well We see customers who experience the product they rate it really high highly they use it again And so it's just it's just an absolute done it done dynamic product So we've mostly only spoken about the x y axis and We have a couple of our friends who built businesses that are you know trying to launch these EV tall businesses some of our other friends who are experimenting with small drone delivery.

13:45Tell us where all of those things play in your infrastructure going forward. So we're absolutely believer in EVTAL, we're an investor in Joby, and we are going to work with them as those vehicles become available. We know that there are some other vehicles, but I think that the kind of Z -axis, if you want to call that, makes a ton of sense. listen, in cities of the world, essentially they have built in the third dimension because there's only so much that you can expand, you know, in the X and Y dimension. So businesses have expanded in third dimension, residences have expanded in third dimension, but our transportation infrastructure is only expanding in two dimensions.

14:28So it's no wonder that traffic just keeps getting worse and worse and worse because that third dimension is unavailable. So we are They're absolutely believers in both EVTALs and drone delivery. Now I think on the delivery side, there are two areas that we're working on. One is sidewalk robots. It's easier tech to develop. Explain that as a sidewalk robot. So sidewalk robots, there are some of them in LA and Santa Monica. they are autonomous vehicles that drive on the sidewalks, they drive pretty slowly, they're very, very safe, they look kind of cute, and they're appropriate for deliveries that are a mile or less long.

15:15So deliveries in a tight space. And so there's a certain addressable market for us in deliveries where those sidewalk robots work and we're working with serve, cardigan, and number of other players in the US, in Japan in a number of other markets. Then on the other side is drone delivery. And drone delivery is a proper for markets where, you know, they're more spread out, suburban, no high rises, et cetera. Those two together we think can cover 50 % of our delivery tam so to speak. But then there's another 50 % that we're gonna have to work on in terms of the first and the last mile. You know, coming out of the restaurant and then getting the food into your apartment as well.

15:57Humans take care of their own first and last mile. But you need something to take care of the first and last mile of the food. That's where the challenge is gonna come in and we're working with a number of players to see how we can get that first and last mile for food. I wanna talk to you for a minute if I may about the balance sheet. One of the great early insights we had at Uber was around profitability. And the press and the narrative was, oh, Uber could never be profitable. And I would talk to TK about it and William and all the Josh in New York. And they're like, yeah, we could flip it at any moment in time to $2 more ride.

16:35We would lose no rides, that would be wildly profitable. And in fact, under your stewardship, Uber has become a money printing machine to the point at which you announced a $20 billion stock buyback. Yes. And I saw it and I said, wow, this is just incredible. However, Did you tweet about it by chance? I might have. Once in a while I'll retweet you and give you a little shine. But I did have this thought that, and I had Chris from Nuro on the program, and you have this great partnership to put 20 ,000 Lucits on the road. What wrong podcast? What's that going? The other podcast. And so I'm wondering how you think about the War Chess, the money printing machine, and deployment of that asset.

17:17How do you decide $20 billion stock buy back versus putting 300 million to Nuro, or we had Travis on the podcast, and he said he's had many opportunities to look at things like Pony, which has been in the press. And it would be pretty great to have the original founder, maybe, I don't know, you've got a couple of billion laying around and maybe help him have Pony come to the West. So how do you think about deploying that capital in order to continue to grow from where we at. One percent of rides globally are ride -sharing approximately. A little more, but it's between one and two percent. It's a very low number.

17:52It's clear it's going to go to 20 with autonomy. And so if we all believe that, and that's obvious, is that the best use of the capital? How do you make that decision? So I think the good news for us is it's not either or. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. In the past 12 months, we've had over or 80 and a half billion of cash flow. The business is growing, you know, top line, 18 % bottom line, 35%. So that cash flow is gonna grow by a lot over the next three to five years. And we announced the 20 billion buyback because in looking forward to areas in which we could invest aggressively, for example, in AV, because we should, because it's an enormous opportunity, whether it's vehicles or fleets, et cetera.

18:38We are very comfortable that we've got enough capital to be super aggressive there appropriately and at the same time buy back our stock. There's a great company we know of. Management team can get a little better but they're okay. And we think it's a great deal. So it's not it's not at either or it's an an for us. And we're lucky to be in that position at this point. You have a very big business in Uber Eats. Yes. It competes with folks like DoorDash. When Travis was on the pod a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, he talked about sort of the robotization of food and all of that. Can you just talk to us about your vision of where all of that stuff goes to?

19:18So we actually work with Travis and his cloud kitchens business. He's also built a restaurant tech business in order as well. And I do think that you are, you know, any food business that is not deep in delivery is going to lose share period for the foreseeable future. So every single player, food player, grocery player, even now retail player has to get into delivery and has to get into on -demand delivery, otherwise they're kind of missing the most attractive segment of consumers out there. And I think as the cost of labor is going up, all of these businesses are building, are investing increasingly in robotization.

20:05It's not something that we are getting into, but as more food, healthy food, delicious food becomes more available, lower prices, then our delivery business will benefit a lot of other parts. I mean, I'm hearing consistently from you and you can just tell me if this is wrong, that that you are becoming increasingly an asset -like, highly liquid distribution network. Like you have this incredible network effect. You have these hundreds of millions, maybe approaching a billion users. And you can just pour them into all of these things. We are essentially, we bring demand to the assets that are driving the movement of people and things and food and grocery.

20:45And these are all asset -heavy businesses. So the next incremental piece of demand that comes from our network is incredibly valuable for them. And we can do so staying largely capital -light. At the same time, to the extent that I can use my capital to invest in the AV ecosystem or fleets, et cetera, we can also do that. There's one company that wants to go on its own. A friend of ours runs it. I think that you probably have had some conversations. Obviously, publicly, you have of what's the best pitch to Elon to put 100 ,000 robotaxies into the Uber fleet? While still doing his own, because his app is doing spectacularly well, and the pilots are doing well, so he'll obviously figure it out.

21:28But what's your best pitch to him to joining the Uber network? I think, listen, the pitch is simple, which is, if you're looking to maximize the revenue of those robotaxies today, we are your ticket to the maximization of that revenue, to the extent that you're looking to have these fleets owned by people, you know, kind of the digital shepherds, which is an amazing vision that Elon has, to the extent that those owners are not able to monetize their assets on the Uber network, they will under monetize, and if there's a competitor who is offering those vehicles to be on the Uber network, the monetization of those vehicles are gonna be superior, and those digital shepherds are gonna go elsewhere.

22:10So I think that is the pitch, And again, Elon is, you know, he kind of believes in full stack. Yes. And he's proven it. And I think that this market is large enough for there to be multiple winners. Clearly. But in the end, to the extent that, you know, we would love to partner with them. But at this point, they're looking to go it alone. And I think the market is large enough to carry a number of winners in this. Why is he a tough question about humans? I was talking to Will Barnes, who ran originally in Los Angeles and then half of the country for Travis and Will Barnes had a pretty amazing insight, which was in the early days we had humans protesting humans competing for the taxi drivers versus the rideshare drivers.

22:55In China, in Wuhan, in fact, there's been a lot of civil unrest and they're talking about limiting the number of licenses for self -driving cars because of the disruption that would happen if young men who have those jobs are not able to have a job. And we saw the waymos get called to their death here in Los Angeles, and that was a pretty clear message as well. How do you think about that group of people losing their jobs, these drivers who built the Uber network, who built Lyft, who built DoorDash, and China's overwhelming concern about this, because these are robots taking human jobs. And there's a lot of discussion about this, and I think maybe in the tech industry, we don't talk about it head on.

23:35I think listen, this is it's a big issue for AI in general and job displacement you see it with younger graduates as well. I think for us at least for the next five years the number of robot cars coming on to the platform are not going to be displacing people because the platform is just growing so quickly that we can very easily take that take that demand and And there is a natural turnover of our driver base. So in a market like in Austin, or other markets in which we're launching autonomous, we will turn down the driver recruitment machine so the robots can come in. And the drivers who are currently driving in the platform can make as much money.

24:20So Austin drivers now are making as much or more money than they were before we introduced Waymo. So I think for the next five to seven years, We're going to have more human drivers and delivery people just because we're going so quickly. But I think 10 to 15 years from now, this is going to be a real issue. Jason, I don't have a need answer for it. We're finding other kinds of work. We've got drivers and couriers, labeling AI labels and looking, we have a whole UBER AI solutions business. So we're essentially one way to look at Uber is we are a platform for work and transportation is a first kind of work And now we're expanding into other kinds of on -demand work as well to be able to adjust the kind of work available to people who want to earn our platform But I think long term this is a big big societal question that we're gonna have to struggle with and lots of others are gonna struggle with too Absolutely All right.

25:22Thank you very much. Thank you. Really appreciate it Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys. Great. Crush this. Thank you, my brother.