Uber burned for Trump link, Tesla unscathed
While Uber got shellacked for its link to President Donald Trump, the electric carmaker and sometimes-rival Tesla has comfortably weathered its association with a president who has lower approval ratings than any predecessor in his first days in office.
Uber Technologies lost customers and drivers and became the subject of a Twitter campaign that encouraged people to delete their Uber apps. The opposition compelled Uber chief executive officer Travis Kalanick to quit Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum. Meanwhile, Tesla faced relatively minimal backlash and no comparable boycott effort, and CEO Elon Musk said he has no plans to quit the committee.
The contrast is viewed as a double standard within Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco. In private conversations, senior management and investors have groused that Musk has emerged unscathed from his associations with a divisive president and his membership on the same business advisory group that Kalanick had to abandon, according to people involved in these discussions.
“That’s not representative of how we feel,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokesperson for Uber. “No one working at Uber would want another company to experience what we have over the past few weeks.”
This wasn’t the first time Uber watched jealously as Musk sidestepped the very same obstacles encountered by the ride-hailing giant. In December, Uber deployed a small fleet of self-driving cars in San Francisco without applying for an autonomous vehicle licence. When the California Department of Motor Vehicles came calling, Uber pointed to Tesla, saying it was only following the automaker’s lead. “What we are doing today is just like Tesla,” Anthony Levandowski, head of the company’s Advanced Technologies Group overseeing self-driving cars and other projects, said at the time.
Officials didn’t agree. The DMV revoked Uber’s car registrations, while Tesla drivers could continue letting their robotic cars guide them around town.
Each company is shaped by the outsize reputation of its founding leader. Whereas Kalanick is seen as a pugnacious Ayn Rand fan who champions free markets, Musk is a whiz bringing rocket ships, electric cars, traffic-busting tunnels and other futuristic goodies to humanity.
“Elon Musk absolutely has created the Tesla brand very much based on his personal brand,” said Daniel Binns, managing director at Omnicom Group-owned consulting firm Interbrand. “There’s a huge amount of positive goodwill for the brand.”
The Tesla brand — and by extension, Musk’s — represents “a noble ambition: the vision is to make the world more sustainable by providing renewable energy sources, cars and battery sources,” Binns said. “Uber doesn’t have that. It’s not known for being a mission-driven organization.”
Tesla declined to comment. Uber’s Hazelbaker said, “We know we’ve made mistakes in the past, and we are working hard to serve riders, drivers and cities around the world.”
Of course, it’s a lot easier for people to demonstrate their dismay with Uber. They can delete an account and switch to a competing app. Drivers can change allegiances to U.S. rival Lyft and get a $1,000 (all figures U.S.) signup bonus to boot. Lyft ran a national ad campaign to capitalize on this conception of Uber as cold and uncaring. Lyft’s darling status among liberals is another source of consternation for the Uber camp, people familiar with the situation said. That’s because Lyft’s board includes representatives of funds founded by two Trump allies, Peter Thiel and Carl Icahn.
Unlike with Uber, it’s tougher to dump a $70,000 all-electric, partially autonomous car with few peers on the road.
“Uber is a household name,” said Bradley Tusk, an Uber adviser and former mayoral campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP. Still, Americans weren’t boycotting ubiquitous American brands such as Pepsi or Walmart, whose chiefs also sit on the council.
Uber’s early scandals shaped the company’s image in the minds of many people. It’s haunted by events such as the use of surge pricing during hurricane Sandy and other emergencies, as well as its deployment of underhanded tactics against competitors that backfired. Even today, it’s engaged in lawsuits contending that it takes advantage of drivers by not giving them employment benefits or allowing unions.
Last week’s Trump ordeal traces its roots to one of the earliest sources of controversy for the company: surge pricing. This time, people were upset that Uber turned it off. On Jan. 28, Uber posted a tweet saying it was suspending fare increases at a New York City airport shortly after cabbies protesting Trump’s immigration ban were set to disperse. Uber had wanted to avoid giving the impression of profiteering from a protest, but instead, it was labelled a scab for purportedly trying to break the strike.
The outrage was fuelled by Kalanick’s perceived friendliness toward the Trump administration, thanks to the advisory council and a soft statement he put out after the president signed an executive order targeting immigrants from seven majorityMuslim countries.