Uber, Lucid & Nuro Agree A $300M, 6-Year, 20,000 Robotaxi Deal As Waymo Grows

Autonomous vehicles have become a major talking point for automakers and tech companies the world over—and while personal self-driving cars have garnered a lot of the attention, robotaxis have captured most of the headlines over the last couple of years.

The most notable move in recent times has been Tesla’s much-awaited entry into the robotaxi sector.

After much delay—and the request of more delays and calls for bans—Tesla finally made its robotaxis available to the public, albeit through a limited, invite-only preview. Initially receiving extremely positive reviews, Tesla’s robotaxi wasn’t a stranger to criticism drawn from mistakes.

At the same time, Tesla celebrated the first completely autonomous delivery of a car, where the vehicle drove itself from the company’s Gigafactory in Texas to a customer’s house, which involved a 30-minute drive.

However, as far as robotaxis are concerned, Tesla is on the right track, it seems and is taking it slow and steady, keeping to CEO Elon Musk’s words that noted the company is “being super paranoid about safety.”

Uber, on the other hand, is powering through the robotaxi sector with numerous strategic partnerships, including WeRide, Volkswagen, May Mobility, Momenta, and others.
 

Lucid, Nuro, And Uber

Lucid Group, Nuro, and Uber Technologies recently announced a next-generation premium global robotaxi program that’s created exclusively for Uber’s ride-hailing platform.

The agreement will also see Uber make multi-hundred-million-dollar investments in Nuro and Lucid, where the amount for Lucid is estimated to be around $300 million, as per a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Through the partnership, Uber aims to launch 20,000 or more Lucid vehicles equipped with the Nuro Driver Level 4 autonomy system over six years. The goal is to launch the robotaxis in a major U.S. city sometime next year.

The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or its third-party fleet partners. Currently, the first prototype, a Lucid Gravity, is being tested on a closed circuit at Nuro’s Las Vegas proving grounds.


“We’re thrilled to partner with Nuro and Lucid on this new robotaxi program, purpose-built just for the Uber platform, to safely bring the magic of autonomous driving to more people across the world,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber.

“This investment from Uber further validates Lucid's fully redundant zonal architecture and highly capable platform as ideal for autonomous vehicles, and our industry-leading range and spacious well-appointed interiors, as ideal for ridesharing,” said Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO at Lucid.

“Nuro has spent nearly a decade building an AI-first autonomy system that’s safe, scalable, and vehicle-agnostic, proven through five years of driverless deployments across multiple U.S. cities and states,” said Jiajun Zhu, Co-Founder and CEO at Nuro.
 

Baidu And Uber

Two days before Uber announced the move with Lucid and Nuro, the company revealed a multi-year strategic partnership to deploy thousands of Baidu’s Apollo Go self-driving vehicles on its platform.

The idea is to boost the availability of affordable and reliable ride-sharing options on Uber’s platform across multiple global markets outside of the U.S. and mainland China, with first deployments expected to be in Asia and the Middle East later this year.

Currently, Apollo Go has deployed over 1,000 fully driverless vehicles in 15 cities across the world, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi.


“As the world’s largest platform of its kind, spanning mobility, delivery, and freight, Uber is uniquely positioned to help AV leaders like Baidu bring their autonomous technology to the world,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber.

"We are committed to bringing the benefit of autonomous driving technology to more people in more markets, and this partnership with Uber represents a major milestone in deploying our technology on a global scale," said Robin Li, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Baidu.
 

Waymo And Uber

Uber already has an agreement in place with Waymo, which includes bringing robotaxis to Austin (Texas) and Atlanta (Georgia).

Now, the two are expanding their reach in Austin.

According to a post published by Waymo on X (which was reposted by Uber), the autonomous vehicle automaker is increasing its serviced area from 37 square miles to 90 square miles, and will now cover neighborhoods such as Crestview, Windsor Park, Sunset Valley and Franklin Park.

These rides will be available only on Uber.

“North to South, we're covering more ground in Austin starting today. Safe and fully autonomous Waymo rides, only on @Uber. See you on the road, ATX,” reads the post.


The move comes shortly after the company celebrated “100 million real world, fully autonomous miles driven on public roads” or “more than 200 trips to the Moon and back,” as per another post by the automaker on X.

Ahead of this, Uber also announced a new exclusive contract with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), enabling rideshare access to millions of federal employees and contractors for trips such as business trips, veterans’ healthcare rides, emergency response, victim and witness transportation, and more.

This renewed contract was originally awarded in 2020 and has once again been renewed for an additional five years.

Do you think these moves will help Uber capture a strong position in the robotaxi ride-hailing market? Do you think its competitors will make similar moves?

Let us know in the comments below!