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I've seen this idea but can't understand it. By owning or leasing a fleet of driverless cars Uber only increases its operating costs

Well, for Uber it's do or die.

But for the manufacturers of autonomous vehicles- why would they sell cars Uber at a ~5% margin per car when they can offer the robotaxi service themselves and command a ~25% margin per trip?

That's easy. Because don't have to worry about finding customers, fighting off competition, and competing with their customers (like Uber). They just have to worry about building cars.

Further, they're also collecting massive amounts of data about commuting patterns that will give them an edge over new entrants once driverless cars are a thing.

Ahem. "cards" = "cars", "inertia" = "momentum"