Elon Musk talked more about Tesla ride-sharing service to rival Uber, Lyft

Tesla CEO Elon
Musk.
James Glover /
Reuters

• Elon Musk on Wednesday said that Tesla is “obviously” making
  moves for its own rideshare service that would compete with
  companies like Uber and Lyft.
• Musk says the service should launch
  by the end of 2019. It will let customers loan out their
  cars to users, as well as include a fleet of self-driving cars
  that can pick up passengers.
• The comments were made when Musk was sharing updates on
  Tesla’s third-quarter earnings, which
  showed a surprising profit.

Elon Musk again hinted at an upcoming rideshare program Tesla is
developing that would mix two hot trends in the automotive
industry: ride-hailing services and self-driving cars.

Tesla
has mentioned plans for such a service before, and Musk said
in May it
would “probably” be ready to launch by the end of 2019. On a
Wednesday earnings call after Tesla reported its third-quarter
earnings, Musk said his company’s service would “compete directly
with Uber and Lyft, obviously.”

But the major difference between the three service is that Musk’s
platform,
dubbed the Tesla Network, would be entirely made up of
autonomous cars. 

Tesla will provide its own fleet of company-owned cars for
customers to hail, as well as maintain a network of Tesla owners
who can make money by lending out their cars for use and
recalling them for personal use at will (like home-sharing
service Airbnb).

There are competitors out there that are planning their own
ride-hailing services for self-driving cars — both Waymo and
General Motors
have made known their intentions. However, Musk said in May
that Tesla would use cameras and radar instead of
LiDAR sensors, which use laser light to measure the car’s
distance from other objects on the road.

Tesla has yet to develop full self-driving software, as it

races other major companies investing in the technology,
including Apple, Amazon, General Motor’s Cruise, Intel’s
Mobileye, and Alphabet’s Waymo (just
to name a few).

Tesla does have its
Autopilot system, with semi-autonomous driving capabilities.

Up until last week, Tesla was selling “full self-driving
hardware” on its site, which would give customers access to these
capabilities as soon as the software become available and had
regulatory approval. But customers were confused about the
difference between the two, so Tesla removed the full
self-driving option from its website.

More from Tesla’s third-quarter earnings:

Get the latest Tesla stock price here.