Last year, famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Tesla investor Steve Juvertson recalled a conversation he had with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:
Travis recently told me that in 2020, if Telsas are autonomous, he’d want to buy all of them. He said all 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I’d want them all, but he couldn’t get a return call from Elon.
Well apparently Kalanick couldn’t wait any longer and reportedly already placed an order for 100,000 autonomous Mercedes S-Class sedans, according to sources inside Daimler and Uber talking to German magazine Manager Magazin.
TL;DR/Takeaway: Uber reportedly placed an order for 100,000 autonomous Mercedes S-Class sedans valued at around €10 billion ($11 billion). The order is not expected to be fulfilled until around 2020./
According to Manager Magazin, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche and Kalanick recently came to an agreement, though it will be contingent on diverse conditions, not the least of which actually building the technology for autonomous driving.
Mercedes currently doesn’t have a fully self-driving car, but it does offer several assisted driving features under its “Drive Pilot”, which is similar to Tesla’s Autopilot program. Here’s a video about the E-Class autonomous features:
Following Jurvetson’s comment about Uber buying Tesla’s future autonomous cars, there’s been persisting speculation that Tesla will launch a competing ride-sharing system. The speculation mostly originated from the following conversation between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and financial analyst Adam Jonas during a conference call last year:
Adam Jonas – Morgan Stanley
Hey, Elon, Deepak. First question, Steve Jurvetson was recently quoted saying that Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, told him that if, by 2020, Tesla’s cars are autonomous, that he’d want to buy all of them. Is this a real – I mean, forget like the 2020 for a moment, but is this a real business opportunity for Tesla, supplying cars to ridesharing firms, or does Tesla just cut out the middleman and sell on-demand electric mobility services directly from the company on its own platform?
Elon Musk – Tesla’s CEO
That’s an insightful question.
Adam Jonas – Morgan Stanley
You don’t have to answer it.
Elon Musk – Tesla’s CEO
I think – I don’t think I should answer it.
Now that Uber seems to have decided to buy its future cars from Mercedes instead of Tesla, it could represent further indications that Tesla is looking to compete with Uber in the ride-sharing industry, or should I say autonomous ride-sharing industry.
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Any pricing on the Mercedes as compared to the Model S 70D?
S-Class is priced very close to the Model S depending on options
So If Uber originally wanted 500,000 autonomous cars by 2020
Who got the bid for the remaining 400,000 cars?
I sure hope they leased them because in 2 years they will have made a colossal mistake once Tesla updates the fleet with full level 4 autonomy.
This TL;DR/ Takeaway thing you guys are doing now is lame. Especially lame when you are making the TL;DR longer than the preceding text. Respect the intelligence of your readers and just write a good article.
What? Longer? it’s a paragraph. Article is way longer.
I count 5 paragraphs, a pull-quote and a video after the TL;DR
The TL;DR is just the paragraph where it says TL;DR. I thought it was clear. Since that’s the purpose of a TL;DR…
In my opinion TL;DR a sarcastic redditism that belongs on message boards, not on news sites. It would read a lot better if you used the final paragraph to summarize your points, and dropped the user forum lingo.
what does that TLDR nonsense mean?
This comment is a bit harsh.
@Fred Lambert
I too think this should be fixed. I would move the TL;DR paragraph at the top or the bottom of the post and maybe style it differently (e.g grey or in a box).
This should be really interesting. While both Uber and Mercedes are bigger companies than Lyft and General Motors, it appears that General Motors will have a head start in the technology, and lower cost for the cars in the North American market.
GM a head start in autonomous driving? Please explain.
I believe he is referring to this: https://www.gm.com/mol/m-2016-mar-0311-cruise.html
Buying a startup is hardly a lead. GM’s ‘Super Cruise’ the company’s equivalent of Tesla’s Autopilot, is only set to be release next year. Almost 2 years after Tesla and other automakers. I don’t think they are ahead of anyone.
Wonderful, replace hard working people with more computers all for the profit of a handful of people. Rich get richer & the poor get homeless. Uber has shown that over the past 15 months (3 rate cuts AND a commission increase) that he could care less about the driver’s pocket as long as his business grows and his pocket doesn’t feel any lighter. He also looks like the kind of guy that I wouldn’t want around little boys & girls.
well… smart working people are always better paid than hard working people.
I believe Elon is not about to promise full autonomy by any particular date He’s figured out that it’s harder than people think it is — you need 99.99% safety and you can’t get that good yet. Mercedes will almost certainly default on this deal.
Hmmm… interesting. Imagine the competitive advantage Tesla would have with the massive supercharger network. Plus, that robotic recharging snake thing. I think they are very seriously thinking about a future network of autonomous vehicles.
No way there will be fully autonomous vehicles in production 2020. Google is ahead of all the industry and they still won’t be able to deliver that soon.
Cars with assisted driving features (like Tesla’s Autopilot) is not what a company like uber needs to get rid of the drivers, but fully autonomous cars that can be summoned without a driver.