Musk: Tesla Network will be Airbnb of ride-sharing

During the Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, Elon Musk talked about “Tesla Network”, claiming that when it is launched it will put the company at an advantage over Uber and Lyft, due to its aim of autonomy.

According to Musk’s vision, the Tesla Network will enable the customers to either provide ride-sharing service in their vehicle, similar to other ride-hailing services or rent out their vehicles to other customers, similar to other crowdsourcing agencies, like Turo and Maven. Musk says this will make Tesla Network Airbnb for shared mobility. Despite pulling full autonomy feature from its webstore, Musk still underlined that the feature will give the company advantage over others.

Uber enters trailer leasing business

Uber has announced that it is entering trailer leasing business. The service will be called Powerloop and will be part of Uber freight — a service that connects truckers with shippers. Powerloop will rent trailers to carriers and it is already available in Texas, US, but will be expanding to other regions of the country. The service already has a major client, brewer Anheuser-Busch.

Ride-hailing giant still is losing money and is trying to diversify its business. The company is already losing its market share for ride-hailing to Lyft — in August, Uber accounted for 70% of US ride-sharing, with Lyft at 28% — up 2% from the beginning of the year. Uber also plans to go public next year, hoping for a valuation of around $120 billion.

Yandex expands autonomous taxi service to Moscow

Russian tech company Yandex announced that it will be expanding its self-driving taxi service to cover a region of capital. This is the first publicly launched self-driving taxi service in Europe, as most other European companies play safe and are still in the pilot modes.

The service will be launched in Skolkovo, tech hub of the city which houses science and technology institute, as well as, 1100 startups, and will start with just two autonomous vehicles.

Previously, the service operated only in the small town of Innopolis.