(almost) Everyone is wrong about Tesla vs Uber

all right so here's the argument i don't think tesla and uber are real direct competitors in the sense that many people think they are let me explain so uber has a network their beginnings were formed because drivers are scarce you don't know where a driver is like with their car and so what uber did was they pulled all these drivers and their cars together and they offered a connection from this network of drivers who are available to pick you up around you and they connected it to the people who needed that ride.

So they pooled the supply together.

Now the demand was there, right? Taxi services, et cetera, had already validated that there were people wanting taxis, but Uber basically pooled together the scarce resources of non-real taxi drivers, right? full-time taxi drivers, pulled them together, created a whole new source of supply for transportation.

An amazing service for what it served.

Now, in the age of robotaxis, there's a problem.

There's no more scarcity of drivers.

And what I mean by that is the robotaxi by nature has no driver in it.

It's AI driven.

And that's the revolutionary part of a robotaxi is you strip the human component, the human labor out of the equation.

And because of that, there's going to be an abundant supply of robotaxis.

Think about it, how hard is it to come up with one human? Give birth to one human and raise them for 18 years and you'll see, that's really, really hard.

But make one car, it's relatively easy.

It's like a slight fraction.

you know 0.001 or whatever i don't know what it is but so much easier than raising a human right and in that sense robotaxi and that in the age of robotaxis you don't have to deal with the scarcity of humans and that's a super scarce resource because of that you're just gonna have to scale or just make robotaxis and make cars and that's so much easier that's why there's going to be a huge uh supply or onslaught of robo taxis available versus compared to now now one of the biggest challenges uber has is human drivers and recruiting human drivers uber constantly loses human drivers are constantly having to recruit new drivers It's a huge thing.

And then they can't control when the drivers exactly drive.

And so they have to work with their existing pool of drivers.

It's an immensely complicated and messy business to be in.

And that's what RoboTaxi, I guess, escapes or gets rid of, circumvents in a sense.

And because of this, and the abundance, the future abundance of robotaxis.

What we're seeing is Uber will lose their relevance in a sense of no longer was pulling together scarce drivers.

Like right now it's valuable because let's say there's not much robotaxis out there.

but in age where there's an abundance of robo taxis that can take you from point a to b cheaper than human drivers what's the point of bringing together human drivers right there is no scarcity in that anymore there's not much value in that anymore therefore uber starts to lose their relevance now um some people say oh but doesn't uber have network right and their network effects millions of people use it they have brand they have trust they have loyalty all this stuff people have the Uber app and they're used to it.

However, in my opinion, the maker of the best robot taxis, especially the first movers, they will be able to create their own network very, very easily.

And this is where I think I differ from a lot of people who think that Uber has value, even in a robot taxi world.

The reason is, is because since robot taxis are so much more efficient than an Uber, because you take out the human labor element, Uber is stuck with managing human drivers and that labor, while let's say a Tesla robotaxi just manages hardware.