#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Innovation, Safety and Accessibility: A Conversation with Tony West moderated by Roland Martin

Episode Date: August 13, 2019

Innovation, Safety and Accessibility: A Conversation with Tony West, Senior Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, and Corporate Secretary at Uber moderated by Roland Martin. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, folks. Glad to have all of you here. We are not only talking to the folks in the room, but also those who are watching our live stream. We've been live streaming a number of our sessions during this convention to NABJ's Facebook YouTube platforms, as well as my Roland Martin unfiltered platforms.

My name is Roland Martin, of course, Vice President of Digital for NABJ, as well as Senior Analyst for the Times Morning Show, and Managing Editor of Roland Martin Unfiltered, my daily digital show. And glad to be here, glad to have this conversation with

Tony West of Uber. I like to do conversations a little bit different. So we had this conference call, and they had all this different stuff. You got questions. I was like, what are you going to talk about? I'm like, don't know. It's organic.

So first off, Tony, what you do? What do you do? Well, I'm the lawyer, the main lawyer for Uber. Got it. But I've got sort of three areas that I manage. One is the legal department. The other one is compliance and ethics. And the third is security,

cybersecurity and physical security. And so all three of those amounts to about 650, 700 people are folks that I manage in my team to power the Uber platform. One of the things that I talk about a lot is that we have to create this sort of different worldview. You know what you see.

And when we talk about sports, a lot of kids want to play sports. And what I explain to them is, well, you can be in the NBA without having to bounce a basketball. That's right. And so as an African American who's in corporate America, how do you also get folks to understand that if you want to be a lawyer, you don't have to just be a civil rights lawyer, don't have to be an entertainment lawyer, don't have to take the traditional roles that folks have taken, but you can think in a much broader way in just what you're doing right now.

Yeah, well, part of it, I think, is exposure, right? I think when you look at my own career, for instance, I actually didn't want to be a lawyer. I was much more interested in politics and in public service. And the only reason I went to law school is because I figured I needed a skill in case that other career path didn't work out. Now was it a skill or did your mom and dad say, look, you're going to be a lawyer or a doctor, so you've got to pick? It may have been a little bit of that too. Right, yeah, yeah. It may have been a little bit of that too.

Yeah, uh-huh. But what happened is in the course of going to law school, becoming a lawyer, I realized that I could marry, and then really in some of the things I was exposed to, I realized I could marry both this love of public service and the law. And so one of the first jobs at a law school was working for the Department of Justice, working for Janet Reno, Attorney General Reno in the Clinton administration. And what that led to- Doing what at DOJ? Oh, at DOJ, I was the most junior of junior political appointees. And so basically anything they told me to do. What it really was, though, more than anything, was a mentorship because Attorney General Reno took an interest in me, took an interest in my career, had talked about how much she had enjoyed being a prosecutor here in Florida, and really encouraged me to do that. And so she became one of my first mentors in the law, actually. And so I ended up having a career that was both half, essentially half my career was in public service,

in the Justice Department, and then half my career was in the private sector, either in private practice or now in corporate law. And part of it was being exposed to these different experiences, because I certainly never started out looking to be the general counsel of Uber or any company, let alone Uber. But what I realized is when I had these opportunities,

it was important for me to make sure that other young kids of color, particularly young law students of color, had exposure to that. So when I was the general counsel of PepsiCo, I started an internship program which brought in students of color to spend some time with us at PepsiCo so they could see what an in-house counsel program looked like and what that whole life looked like. I'm doing the same thing at Uber, and I'm starting with kids even before they go to law school. But how do you also, in your role, drive home bringing folks to senior level positions?

Because what often happens is that, as we all know, in a lot of these companies, there's a ceiling. There's a ceiling. And to me, it's important to have black executives who are not just in the room, but at the table, say, look, I don't only want to have somebody look like me at this table, and making sure that happens as well. So you spend the capital that you have when you're in these positions of power and influence, right? What you do is you make sure you're intentional about bringing black folks into the room,

about bringing other underrepresented folks into the room, about bringing women into the room. When you look at Uber in particular, when I started, it hasn't even been two years since I've been at the company, but when I started in late November 2017, I was the new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. I was his first executive hire. And together we had a mandate to change the culture of that company because we had gone through Delete Uber. We had gone through in 2017 the Susan Fowler blog that talked a lot about the sexual harassment. We had a board of directors that was at war with itself, literally suing one another.

And what that mandate did is it gave me, frankly, the flexibility to completely change my entire leadership team. So now I've got 14 direct reports. Eight of them are women. Not just in the room, as you say, but at the table. Hold on, I don't want you to run past that. Because somebody listening, y'all might say, well, and this is what's important. There are a lot of folks who have great titles, but no staff. They have no P&L responsibility,

no profit and loss responsibility. And the reality is, to go to the next level, you've got to have more than just a title. And so on that point where you just said how many people are underneath you, you literally have P&L responsibility. That's a different thing than just having a nice title and a secretary. True.

However, these folks have real responsibilities. So let me give you a perfect example. One of the folks I hired to be a part of my team, one of my direct reports is a guy named Keir Gumbs. Keir is an African-American, was in private practice, had worked on a lot of, had advised a lot of companies from his role in private practice going public, but he had never taken a company public as part of that company. I hired him, brought him onto my team as the associate general counsel for the entire corporate department at Uber, brought him in, and he ran point on bringing our company public. It was an amazing platform for him.

He excelled at it, did an incredible job, got great exposure, not just internally but externally, which is something I think is really important to encourage my team to get out externally, right? And his department is actually now increasing in size as he takes on more and more responsibilities, having gone through that important test. That is true for each member of my leadership team.

I feel very, very strongly that you hire the best people that you possibly can find, and then you empower them by giving them the resources they need in order to be effective and execute on the mission. And I just want our folks to understand, because what happens as journalists, a lot of times, unless people are well-versed in some of these institutions, the same thing happens in media, where we get so concerned, we go, oh my goodness, so-and-so is a VP or an SVP, and then you

go, yeah, but what do they do? Who do they oversee? What do they control? How large is their territory? And then when you start asking those questions, then you're like, oh, okay. So you really don't, your level of influence is sort of like here.

Because what this also does is, and for folks who are also watching on the stream, is that what we're talking about also positions you for that next level. Because when they're talking about a COO, a CEO, they're looking at who did you manage, how large was your area, if you will. And that's why it's vital for us to also think that way. I think that's right. I think the other thing too is the reality is when you think about the chief legal officer of the general counsel, that role has changed dramatically over the last 20, 25 years. Whereas before- You're more

head of HR now. Well, but everything, right? Right, right, everything. I mean, it's what's crazy about this role. And one reason I was attracted to it coming out of I was the third most senior person at the Department of Justice working with Eric Holder in the Obama administration. And one of the things that I loved about that job is essentially I was the general counsel of the Justice Department in that role. But coming over to first PepsiCo and now here at Uber, a lot of those skills are transferable because what you find is that the general counsel or the chief legal officer isn't just the lawyer in the room.

They are a counselor. They're a business partner. I tell people all the time, most of the things that Dara asked me about, the CEO, have nothing to do with the law. They have to do with business judgment. They have to do with strategic judgment. They have to do with reputation of the company

and whether or not we're going to do X, Y, or Z, which is exactly the same kind of relationship I had in the Obama administration with Eric and the President. So I think one of the things that you, when you think about life in-house for certain companies, certainly big, large, global companies like ours, those roles are expansive,

and they require you to be a master of many, many different skills, which is why that leadership team is so important, why it's so important for that leadership team to be a diverse team. So let's talk about, when you talk about branding and how it sort of seeps into one's mind. You could be on Yahoo and somebody will say, Google this, even though Yahoo is a search engine. It used to be Xerox this and didn't even matter if your printer was actually Xerox, you just sort of called it. It's also FedEx this.

You could take it to the UPS, so it sort of dropped in it. When it comes to ride sharing, that's really how it is now with Uber. That's true. I mean, you could be using somebody else's app and be like, yo, call an Uber. Exactly right. So talk about that in terms of how in a very short period of time, how this shift in mobility has changed where for so many people, Uber is the first option, even if the taxi is sitting right there. Right. Well, look, I think the first thing is that it's a great responsibility, right? I mean, when you can have a platform, and it's frankly one of the things that attracted me to this job, when you can have a platform that is so ubiquitous, that has sort of seeped into the popular culture,

like Uber, it creates huge opportunities, because our scale is global, being in 65 countries around the world. Huge opportunities, but a huge responsibility. And part of that responsibility is making sure I am unconfused about the fact that, you know, my primary responsibility is to our shareholders. I'm very clear about that. But I also believe that we have a duty to our stakeholders.

These are the communities that we serve. These are the drivers. These are the riders. These are the cities that we serve. These are the drivers. These are the riders. These are the cities that we're engaging with every single day. And so our duty to shareholders may be primary, but it's not exclusive. And so I think taking that attitude

all of a sudden opens doors where you can begin to look for partnerships with cities to extend their public transit system, like we're doing in Denver, like we're doing in London, like we're doing in Cairo. It gives you opportunities to try to weigh in on something like the future of work, where you can lift the dignity and the quality of independent work by being really progressive and proactive. So amazing, amazing opportunities that the scale gives you

as well as responsibilities that come with that. But transportation obviously is changing, is changing rapidly. When you talk about driverless cars, when you talk about also getting in vehicles and literally you're connected and some people are actually recording and they're streaming and because from a safety standpoint as well. And so how do you in that space get people, how do you sort of get your team to understand that it's changing so rapidly, how do they keep up?

Well, I don't think they're keeping up. I think they're leading that change. I think when you think about the way we think about the platform and what we have done to extend mobility and access to mobility in particular, and I want to talk a little bit about that.

When you think about our autonomous vehicle group, ATG, which Toyota has just taken a large share of and is invested in, we're actually leading that. When you think about Elevate, Elevate are VTOLs. This is vertical takeoff and landing, electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles, which sound like, you know, this is sort of the future of urban air transportation within cities. Sounds like something far off. We're going to deploy this in 2023.

It's called what? VTOL. Vertical takeoff and landing. Electric VTOL. Okay, basically flying cars. Flying cars. I'm just trying to make it look easy, Because y'all are like vertical flying cars. Flying electric cars.

Flying electric cars. Really important. Safe, quiet, and green, right? But who's flying the cars? Well, let's see. Because some folks already can't drive. That's right. Well, that's true.

So there will be trained pilots. Flying the cars. Okay. Yes. Flying the elevator VTOLs. Absolutely. So what you're saying is literally if we're in a congested area or whatever and it's going to take me 40 minutes to get across, it's like, no, we can fly to the spot. We'll be there in eight minutes.

That's right. And it'll be affordable. See, the idea is that it would be – it's not going to cost you $200. It's going to be an affordable kind of trip. So it's really air transportation with the masses. We're working on that right now. Have you been in one of them yet? Well, we have.

We don't even – we have a prototype, but it has not yet been deployed. I got a feeling you're like, look, I need one of y'all to test that. And so I'll let y'all fly. Listen, I believe here's the reality. The future of mobility and the future of transportation is safe, it's green, and it's autonomous. Okay. So let's just go back to cars for a second. I think one of the things we will see increasingly is the introduction of autonomous vehicles.

I think it'll be a transition. You won't all of a sudden overnight wake up and all of a sudden all the cars are going to be autonomous. There's going to be a transition. But for those, particularly for those repetitive routes, you know, those very clear, those grids in cities, which are very predictable, you'll see that increasingly be served by electric autonomous vehicles. Many of those will be, and most of those will be shared rides. So you're going to begin to see that transition.

That will green cities. That will also make transportation even more affordable. We see our biggest competition, frankly, as personal car ownership. That's who we're competing against. And so once people sort of, and we already know today, those folks who are millennials, those folks who are coming of driving age, we already know right now that they are not buying cars or even getting their licenses at the same rates that you and I did. So we know that that is changing the face of transportation. How, though, do you deal with, when you talk about this level of disruption, when you look

at where people currently work, So the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. I had Spencer Overton on my show a few weeks ago, and he was talking about what he called the threat to African Americans who are employed in these areas. And so how do you deal with that? The people who are limo drivers, the people who are truck drivers, the people, I mean, you know, that employs millions of people. How do we deal with that? Because when we actually think about technology and how things have changed, I cannot tell you the last time I physically walked into a bank, which means that that person who was at the front, that person who was the teller, that person who was at the drive-through,

those don't even exist anymore in other places. And so how do you also grapple with that in terms of how technology makes our life so much easier, but it also has ramifications in terms of loss of employment or the shifting, if you will, of job sector? There's no question that you're going to see that transition and that disruption. And so one of the questions is how do we make sure that in that transition people of color are fully participating in the economic opportunity on the other side of that transition?

So, for instance, if you think about, you know, Department of Labor that talks about the fastest growing jobs over the next seven to 10 years, can you guess what the top two jobs are? Healthcare got to be one of them. Everyone guesses healthcare, and it is a good guess, because it occupies a lot of spaces on the top 10, but it's not in the top two. The top two are both in renewable energy. They're both in solar or in wind, specifically. And so when you talk about autonomous, again, if you're talking about electric and you're talking about clean, you're talking about a green economy that's got to be powered by renewable energy sources. So the question is, how do you make sure that the transition includes opportunity on the back end of that, particularly

for the communities we're talking about? So that's the first thing. Second thing is, one of the things I do love about the platform is that when you look at the driver population, it is clear that we are offering economic opportunity where it simply didn't exist before. When you think about both, not just economic opportunity for those who choose to drive, but also accessibility to mobility.

The way I actually fell in love with Uber was long before I ever thought about working for the company. I was actually at the Justice Department, and it sort of came out in Washington, D.C., and I absolutely fell in love with this idea that

I didn't have to deal with trying to hail a cab and I get a cab, I could just press a button, you know, a car would show up. And you know Ron Kirk. Yep. Ron Kirk was a U.S. train rep. Known well. Yep. I was at Justice, he was at USTR.

Bad golf swing. I'm just messing with Ron. I'm just messing with him. That's my man. So he'll tell you the story that we were in New York, you know, this is the I'm just messing with Ron. Now he's looking back. I'm just messing with him. That's my man. So he'll tell you the story that we were in New York. This is probably around 2010 before Uber kind of rolled out.

We're in New York, and we'd both taken our wives to dinner at a nice restaurant on Park Avenue. And we come out, it's raining, and neither of us can get a cab. And here we are, some of the most senior folks in the Obama administration, we can't flag a cab. And we laughed about it, and it was funny, but it's an experience that lots of black people... But it also kind of pisses you off.

The reality is that once Uber rolled out, and this is how I discovered it, it was like, I don't have to do that anymore. And so what you begin to see when you look at our business in New York, for instance, the fastest growing part of our business is not in the core of Manhattan. It's in the outer boroughs.

And most of those trips are point to point in the outer boroughs. When you think about Chicago, for instance, half of our business and the fastest growing part of that are in places like West Garfield Park, in Englewood, in West Englewood. That's where the business is growing because where you now have places that were either underserved by transit or were not served by taxi, you see now a number, you see that service, that mobility being provided in those communities. The other thing we also see is when you look at the driver population, and Chicago is a good example, most of our drivers on the platform are from the south and west sides of Chicago.

So creating economic opportunity where we want to see it, also creating accessibility to mobility where it's most needed. Making money. You still got to do that. Still got to make money. Eventually. And when you talk about eventually, and that's also an issue, and then of course for those who are driving, also want to make more money.

So how are you also grappling with that where folks say, look, I'm not making enough, I want benefits, all sorts of things along those lines, because the gig economy for all of its upside also has some downside. Yeah. And I think in so many other sectors, folks are trying to sort of figure that thing out, the reason I brought up healthcare, because it's amazing the people, you know, with my company, what I'm building, there are folks who will say, before you even get to what a salary is, do I have health care? Right.

And so how do you also, as you're growing, also grapple with that? So this is, I think, another benefit when you have a brand like Uber and you have the scale like Uber. The responsibility we talked about earlier means that we can weigh in in a positive or negative way, and we want to make sure it's a positive way on this question of independent work, because even though independent work is still a very, very small, small fraction

of the overall economy, it is growing very quickly, and more and more people are entering that. So the question is, how do you create a type of work that does have the dignity, that does have security? You know, if you ever, for instance, talk to any of your Uber drivers, next time you're in an Uber, I want you to ask your driver, what do you like most? I ain't talking when I'm driving in that seat. I know, but I want you to...

I'm like, turn the radio off, don't talk to me. I'm just saying. I did have to jack one dude up. Did you? Dog, dog, I had to jack him up. I want just saying. I did have to jack one dude up. Did you? No, no. I want to hear about that, but not right now. I had to jack him up. No, no, no, because I even rolled video on him. Oh, did you? Oh, no. Right. Then they were like, okay, yeah, we had to sign with you on that one. He got a little extra.

But it was the right outcome. But I warned him too. I'm like, you really don't want to do this. I said, I'm kind of popular. You really don't want to do this. And he kept going. I said, trust me, I have a few followers. Yeah, it didn't end well. Well, it ended

well for you. Yeah, absolutely. That's important. But you said, okay. Ask your driver. What do they like most about driving? Most of them will tell you it's the flexibility. They can drive when they want, where they want. They don't drive for anybody except themselves.

That whole flexibility that the gig economy gives you, that's powerful. That's a powerful thing. The question is, how do you make sure we have that flexibility, but we also have the security that comes with traditional employment and keep those two things together? And so that's sort of the big problem

that I'm actually spending an awful lot of my time kind of working on. And what we've put together is sort of a framework in that we are actively talking with stakeholders like labor and others on how do we create a framework that gives drivers a predictable floor, earnings floor, so no matter what, they don't fall below a certain amount, and usually that's going to be pegged to minimum wage, local minimum wage, whatever that is. They can always make a lot more than that. I mean, top up to make sure they're being reimbursed for things like payroll taxes and whatnot. How do we give them that earning standard that's predictable?

And then how do we also create a basket of benefits, robust benefits that are portable that allows them to continue to be flexible, to work for Lyft on one trip and work for Uber the next three, but still have access to this basket of portable benefits. And then also make sure that there's a worker association that gives workers the ability to represent or organize if that's what they so choose.

So that's a framework that we actually are actively trying to put together in a couple of states to kind of pilot it and see how that works. Because I think that that begins to create a whole new level of, when you talk about independent work, a whole new level of equality of that. Do y'all have sort of this crazy idea unit? I remember years ago reading a story about 3M. And so they had all of these different things they made. But they gave their engineers flexibility to go to a place and try out their crazy ideas.

Yeah. Which is how Post-it Notes came about. Exactly. Which is how Liquid Paper came about. All these different products. And it's a fascinating story because all of these things that we use were literally just like this crazy idea. Does Uber have a crazy idea unit where it's like, okay, no limits, just go in that corner

and you get to just try to make your crazy idea come alive? Yes. And I would say it's not just one unit. I would say those exist all over the company. One of the reasons why we are not profitable yet is because we are making huge investments in a lot of these different ideas. Some of these big bets won't pan out. We'll invest lots of money and some of them will work.

But some of them are going to change the world. And so making sure you're giving the best and brightest minds the ability and the resources to try out these crazy ideas, to come up with something that really improves quality of life, yeah, that's important. And that's what's... So how often will you go, really? Yeah, oh, that happens from time to time. Really?

When they first started talking about the flying cars, I was like, hmm, okay, how's that going to work? You're like, you know that was a Hollywood thing. Right, exactly, exactly. And they said, oh, it's not going to work. But now I'm a believer. Now I'm a believer. So you are a believer?

I'm a believer in the flying cars, absolutely. What did it? Yeah, you know, part of it was the commitment to safety and working with the regulators. I'm a believer in the flying cars. Absolutely. What did it? Yeah. You know, part of it was the commitment to safety and working with the regulators. I mean, there's been a lot of work done with FAA regulators to make sure we get this right when we're ready to launch. Okay. Safety is important.

So that's, you know, if you're going to be safe. I ain't getting in one until Tony gets in one. When the chief lawyer hops in one, then give me a call. Let's do it together. No, that ain't going to happen. That ain't going to happen. That ain't going to happen.

They're like, why? Because something happened. I got to tell everybody what happened. I got to be the reporter. That's right. All right, we're going to take a few questions. I don't see a mic. Don't worry about it. Oh, you got reporter. That's right. All right, we're going to take a few questions. I don't see a mic. Don't worry about it.

Oh, you got a mic? All right, so you're going to go old school Phil Donahue. So you got some questions. So I actually want you to do this here. So come up. I want you to just stand right on up and ask your question. Name where you're from. Hi, I'm Samuel King.

I'm at KUT Public Media in Austin, Texas. This is a fast-growing place in transportation. You mentioned sort of the partnerships you're doing in some areas in regard to partnering with cities in terms of extending the transit, the sort of last mile problem. Right. You know, in areas like Austin, which are fast growing and we're sort of grappling with what to do about transit, you know, as people continue to move to the area. Can you talk a little more about that, how that works and how that could potentially expand to some other cities? Sure.

No, absolutely. And thanks, Samuel, for the question. So, and Austin is an interesting place. You know, Austin, we had a very contentious relationship with that city government. In fact, they kicked us out at one point. They kicked us out. Now, when Dara and I came in, one of the resets we did was to change the way we engage cities

and the way we engage regulators and to say, hey, look, when cities succeed, we succeed. So let's figure out a way to be partners. And so in Denver, for instance, in London, for instance, when you pick up the app and you dial up Uber, you'll not only see, and you say, listen, I want to go from here to X, you'll not only see the car options come up that you normally see, but you'll also see transit come up and tell you exactly how much it'll cost for you to take transit, how long it'll take, because it'll have the schedule already in there. And you can choose transit if that's going

to be the most effective route and way for you to get from point A to point B. Denver loves it. London loves it, because what it's doing is it's driving traffic to those transit systems. I'd love to see that in every city that's got a transit system that could absorb that. And so in that way, we kind of see ourselves as helping to augment local transportation, public transportation. All right. Hi. I'm Tramiel Gomes, Gomes Media Strategies. I'm based in Tallahassee, and I host a podcast called The Rotunda.

I cover Florida politics. And recently we saw here in Florida the governor signing a bill allowing autonomous vehicles, which I covered. On the issue of ideas that Roland mentioned that is spitballing around, when it comes to safety, that's a big concern for the company, as you mentioned. When it comes to issues that we see those safety incidents that go awry, someone getting into the vehicle and not knowing it's the right vehicle, What are some of the ideas that have been put forward to stop that, mitigate that? I've heard why not come up with like something of a code between the person who's waiting for a ride to exchange with the driver?

What are some of the other ideas? So yeah, no, and thank you for that. There are a lot of ideas. Safety really is, and this is, you ask what do I do? One of the things I do is head up our safety, a lot of our safety initiatives. And so one of those is to make sure that we're trying to make the platform safer, particularly for women, because my belief is that if you improve the safety platform for women, you'll improve it for everyone. We've seen lots of studies that women experience travel differently than men, that they think about things, have to think about things that men don't have to think about. So if you're always kind of sold for those cases, then you're going to improve the platform. Because my wife won't do it alone.

She won't even do a car service. Oh, is that right? So some of the features, some of the ideas, we have put front and center a safety button, essentially an emergency button that you can, with one tap, and in fact here in Florida and a number of places around the country, you hit that one tap, it's an SOS button, and immediately your position, your location is sent

to 911. And they can track you in real time. And we're rolling that out in many places around the country. It's already being rolled out here in Florida. That way, if you find yourself in a situation, you immediately are connected with help. We also have something on here like trusted contacts. So my wife uses this all the time.

Whenever she gets into a vehicle, I can see in real time where she is. My daughter uses it. I love it. Tell your wife that's something that she may consider. You're going to the mall. You lie. Don't buy shoes. I'm putting money into the checking account when I see mall. Yeah, I see that. You lie. I know. I'm putting money. Don't buy shoes. Putting money into the checking account when I see that. Yeah, absolutely.

So we have the trusted contacts. The other thing we have is you will notice that if you order an Uber, it'll tell you immediately the name of your driver and the license plate number. And then. And now it tells you reminders. And then it will tell you again, here's the license plate number, here's the driver, they're on their way. And then when they get to your destination, remember to check your ride, check the license plate number, check the driver name. And so trying to always prompt you to, hey, when you check that license plate number, what I always say is, before I get into a car, I tell Maya this all the time. I say, just say, hey, who are you here for?

Because the driver also has your name. If the driver doesn't say my name, then I know you're something off. There are a number of things that we continue to implement that we try to... Look, the best thing about Uber is that it is diverse.

It reflects the dynamism of society. One of the worst things about Uber is that it is diverse. It reflects the dynamism of society. But one of the worst things about Uber is it's diverse. It reflects the dynamism of society, good and bad, right? All right, another question. Okay, journalists are not scared. So I'm going to be like in school. I'm going to call on you. You know? Go ahead. Stop being shy. No, I guess when you mentioned like the future of transportation

and in terms of the autonomous vehicles, you know, how do you see that in cities in terms of congestion? And that kind of flipped, I have sort of two questions here. Because the one thing is, one of the things that people is becoming sort of a thing out there is that Uber and Lyft

are contributing to congestion in cities. Do you agree with sort of that? And then when it comes to autonomous vehicles in your research, do you think that eventually will help, you know, sort of mitigate that problem? So here's the honest answer to that is the data is mixed on this point

about whether or not rideshare actually adds to congestion, right? And cities have done different things to try to figure that out. So, you know, I gave you the example of New York, right? If most of our rides are not occurring in Manhattan, they're occurring in the outer boroughs, clearly we're not adding, you know...

Well, I should say, the question of whether or not we're adding a lot to the congestion in Manhattan is an open question. That said, we have actually endorsed a number of progressive policies to deal with congestion. Congestion pricing is one of them. If you talk to any transportation experts, they tell you congestion pricing is one of the most effective ways to deal with congestion in cities. We have put money behind supporting public officials' policies, policy proposals on that, because we think that is really important, and we think it will help to deal with congestion. The other thing that we've done is we're working on greening the fleet. So in London, we were working with the mayor there to green the Uber fleet so that it'll be all electric by 2025.

And then the other thing that we're trying to make sure we're doing is really trying to work with public officials on how do we make sure that rideshare is operating in the most efficient way what are the policies that actually promote the most efficient use of rideshare and you know autonomous is part of that because you know ultimately as I said before we're really competing against private car ownership and so where you're going to really see congestion go down is when people decide to stop using their cars,

buying their cars. I mean, the car is a funny thing. The car has got to be the most underutilized asset. I mean, think about it. If you own a car, it sits idle for 95% of the time. And it takes up space, because you've got to have a garage, right? And you've got to find a parking space

when you take it out to use it. It is a very underutilized asset. So if we can begin to change people's mindset about whether or not they need to own a car, that will actually be the greatest thing when it comes to reducing... That ain't happening with me, Tony. You're going to want your key.

I know you want your car. I'm from Texas. Yeah. That'll happen. I'll tell you what. Go ahead and own the car, but for most of your transportation needs, do something else. Because my golf club stays in the car. Oh, okay.

I understand. So when I feel like playing golf, I ain't sitting here trying to go home, get the clubs, go, no. Or I'm going here. Yes. See, born and raised in Texas, golfing is way, you're blocking the camera there, so, golfing is way, I'm way too independent. I understand.

Yeah. It is a mind, listen, it is a mind shift. I know, I know. I mean, listen, I've felt the same way for many years, but then I... And I'm in control of the same way for many years. But then I... And I'm in control of the music. Well, that's... Well, you can still control...

You know, if you know, download the best... It gives you music preferences. No, no, no. You can choose your music preferences. I'm in control of the music and the volume of the music. Okay. Okay. It's like even my nieces ride with me.

They have no privileges in my car. If you have not paid the note or the insurance, you just have to shut up and ride. And enjoy it. There's no vote. Right. No. So own one car for that very excursion,

for that independence, but leave the rest of the transportation. The other 95% maybe try something else. I don't know, because my wife has to drive her car. There's going to be at least two cars at the house. I understand. I understand.

Well, Texas, it might be a little bit more difficult. Look, I barely ride public transportation, so don't leave me. I like all my choices. All right. Any other questions? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, how you doing?

My name is Brian Scorpio, I'm an MBA, Navy, disabled vet. We just had our national mission in Orlando. I drive a turbo diesel Mercedes which gets 40 to 50 miles per gallon, has a 900 mile cruising range. I'm from Washington, D.C. A turbo diesel Mercedes. Mercedes, E250 Bluetech 2014.

I can go 900 miles on a tank of diesel pretty good why doesn't Uber or Lyft I'm not a stay-at-home type so far I've been to Martha's Vineyard Nantucket Key West Orlando okay Ocean City and Virginia Beach and that's all within the last two months like you I agree I like my car I'm not going to give up my car for anything. In Washington, D.C., though, the biggest problem we have is that there is a congestion problem. There's a tremendous amount of construction. And yes, I'm a stockholder in Uber and Lyft, MBA and finance, by the way, and a tax accountant.

Neither company has made a profit yet. Neither company offers military discounts yet. Neither company seems to recognize that there are several other companies trying to do the same thing, VIA and a couple others. Uber is vertically integrated. You've got Uber Eats. You've got several other entities that are integrated, but the stock price thus far does not reflect that. So as an investor and as a consumer, I had a couple of negative experiences using Uber at

one of our Disabled Vets National Commissions in New Orleans. You said that the person's tag is supposed to be identified, et cetera. When I got to the airport in New Orleans, it was very difficult for me to locate my ride. As a disabled veteran, it was incumbent upon me to not teach this person the Americans with Disabilities Act so that they should have been able to make their signs a little bit better, et cetera. I had to wander around trying to find my Uber driver.

I'm calling him, he's calling me in a parking garage so you know how my reception was. Where is Uber headed for this fiscal year to try to improve services for disabled passengers? Thank you for the feedback, and I appreciate the question.

A couple of things. I think we actually are offering incentives and opportunities to veterans in certain cities. I don't think this is nationwide yet. It should be nationwide. I don't disagree. But I do think if you find in certain pockets, and so one question is how do we make sure

we're much broader in our approach on that. But the second thing is, in your point about where we fiscally, look, we've been very upfront with, thank you for being an investor. I agree with you that the stock is a bargain right now. I think that we've been clear that there's a path to profitability, but it's a path. It's not measured in months. It's measured in years. And we're going to continue. But I think as we had earnings yesterday,

as you probably know, in our earnings call yesterday, and I think what you see is some very disciplined, measured steps as we continue to put things in place to move us along that path to profitability. All right, then. Final question. Who's supporting for president? That's easy. Senator Kamala Harris is my candidate. She's my candidate. It's like you've got a choice. Yeah, well, you know, you're right.

I probably don't have a choice. She is my sister-in-law. And my wife wouldn't let me come home. But if I were just a distant... So sister-in-law and your wife is a campaign manager. My wife is the campaign chair. Chair. Yeah, so I mean, it's... But let me tell you.

But even if I were a disinterested observer, I would gravitate to her. I would gravitate to her. You know, Kamala and I were both prosecutors at the same time, and we've obviously, you know, kind of grew up in that world together and worked together. When I was at DOJ and she was the Attorney General of California. We did lots of things together. So I am both a proud family member but also an admirer of her as a public servant. See, this is how he gets to stay at the house. See, it's that on the record publicly.

There you go. That's right. Tony West, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Ro. All right, brother. Thank you. Appreciate you. this is an iHeart podcast