Why would Musk and Tesla sell cars to ridesharing services when they can collect a piece of the revenue that they share with Tesla owners who participate on the Tesla Network rideshare service? Why should Tesla allow Uber or Lyft to profit off of its extensive autopilot work? They shouldn't, and they won't.
The same reason GM lets car rental agencies "profit off" its development of new features: power seats, Onstar, media center, voice nav, better steering, heated seats, etc.
Which is to say, it doesn't, if you measure it right: they charge as much as they can for a car with features x/y/z; once you impute out who is making how much profit from what, you find that GM is profiting from the Onstar, and Avis is profiting from the rental service (matching cars with temporary-use customers). To the extent that Avis can rent cars at a premium with Onstar, that profit is mostly eaten by the extra price.
At no point does GM think, "Merely sell our cars to rental agencies? There go the Onstar profits!"
In just the same way, if Tesla sold cars to Uber/Lyft, they would still be the ones profiting from the SDC premium.
As for Tesla owners participating in the rideshare network: they can probably get a lot steadier renting of the car's off-hours if they have access to an established platform rather than waiting for riders to add another app that only gets rides from the few spare Teslas in the area.
> As for Tesla owners participating in the rideshare network: they can probably get a lot steadier renting of the car's off-hours if they have access to an established platform rather than waiting for riders to add another app that only gets rides from the few spare Teslas in the area.
I could go out today and borrow ~$100K to purchase vehicles and put them on Uber, but I'm not; I'm waiting for Tesla network to leverage up.
GM/Ford Profit Margin: 9-12%
Tesla Profit Margin: 22.8%
Go where the margin is.