Maybe Tesla sell the cars to individuals / businesses, and now the individual wants to find a way to get some extra money from it so they rent it out via a platform.
Uber already has the mindshare and the tech.
Maybe Tesla just wants to sell / rent the cars and not get into the market place.
Tesla could try to compete on that, but they could try right now and compete with Uber, right? It is the same thing.
All that financial risk is now pushed down to individual 'franchisers'.
There's a lot of variables but the car-makers are probably better positioned espcially when it comes to moving around fleets of self-driving cars and servicing them at a nationwide scale
I'm guessing they may be better at dealing with the legal and regulartory issues that could emerge
I'd imagine the software licensing of self driving cars would be so that when you bought a self driving GM/Ford/whatever that is only for personal use and using it for taxi rides would be against the ToS. Which they could quickly catch people out on, and maybe a "taxi" version of the car costs $xxx/month more.
Unless you are suggesting that Uber actually wins the race to self driving, which I really can't see happening. Do they even have a program anymore?