[bubblethink]

There is no legislation about ride sharing/taxi with self driving cars. So whether or not an extra authorization is needed by the owner of the car is a different issue. Here Tesla is asking you to not engage in ride sharing unless Tesla gets a cut. i.e., Even if the government and insurance companies allow you to do so, Tesla won't unless you hand over your cut to them. Is there more to it than that ? Tesla is getting approval to make a car road legal. An insurance company may underwrite insurance for various purposes including taxi. Why do I need tesla's permissions to combine a road legal car for taxi purposes ?

[grkvlt]

Because Tesla is assuming responsibility (that is, guaranteeing fitness for purpose, and all the ramifications that come with that) for the car being able to drive you under the same circumstances as any other private person driving. They would be taking on much more (legal, insurance, etc.) risk if they were to allow the car to drive as a passenger carrying, fare accepting, commercial entity, therefore it seems fair that they require you to use their managed system to (I assume) mitigate and/or manage that risk. I would guess that it would also be possible, eventually, to license the autopilot software for your own arbitrary commercial use.