I actually poked into this a bit out of curiosity. Without doing deeper research than I have any interest in, indeed Kalanick never seems to have publicly said anything like "We are so f'ed without self-driving" (which would be a truly idiotic thing to do) and even made some references to the length of the transition. But he also made reference to things like Uber's growth being limited until Uber was cheaper than owning a car and a ton of pubs seem to have "independently" reached the opinion that this was necessary. And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard.