RESEARCH: Will Travis Kalanick become Head of Robotaxi?

Is Elon about to bring the co-founder of Uber to run the robotaxi network?

Hey, Jaan here.

Put on your tinfoil hats, this is a wild one.

I’ve so far gathered quite few hints that might be nothing, but also might be pieces of a robotaxi puzzle coming together in front of our eyes.

The robotaxi unveiling event is getting closer (8^th of August!), and knowing how Elon operates, I assume there’s a frenzy going on at Tesla to make everything happen.

What happened: Just yesterday, Elon followed Travis Kalanick on X. We know, because our friend Jonas at @elon_alerts keeps us up to date:

Now why would Elon do that? Travis hasn’t posted anything since 2019.

Before we kick off, I want to note that I will not go into how Uber operates under the current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (2017-today), nor will I give my opinions on how it operated under Travis Kalanick (2009-2017). It’s a whole other rabbit hole I don’t want to jump into.

Let me piece together a bit of the historical context between Tesla and Uber:

In 2015, Travis said to Steve Jurvetson (then board member of Tesla):

Jurvetson said Travis apparently couldn’t get a return call from Elon.

Fast forward just a bit, we got Travis Kalanick in 2016, explaining why he felt the urge to move: