Uber to deploy robotaxis with Lucid, Nuro
Uber announced on July 17 it or its third-party partners will purchase and operate Lucid Gravity SUVs outfitted with Nuro Driver technology on its ride-sharing network.
The company aims to launch the first vehicle later in 2026 in an unidentified major US city, with plans to deploy at least 20,000 of the robotaxis over six years.
The ride-sharing company also announced it's making separate multi-hundred-million-dollar investments in both Lucid and Nuro. That funding will include US$300 million (RM1.41 billion) for Lucid that will be used in part to upgrade to its assembly line to integrate Nuro hardware into the Gravity vehicles, according to the EV company.
Lucid won't have issues delivering enough vehicles to meet demand from both Uber and its retail consumer base, the car-maker's interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said.
'We have enough capacity to accommodate both,' he said, while acknowledging Lucid still has 'some issues to overcome' as it ramps up production. 'I don't foresee any shortages.'
Lucid shares soared 38% — the biggest gain in more than two and a half years — to US$3.15 on July 17 in regular trading in New York. Uber shares were little changed.
Separately, Lucid also said it plans a one-for-10 reverse stock split, subject to shareholder approval. Winterhoff said in the interview the split isn't an effort to avoid delisting, but rather a way to make it easier to attract new investors.
The Lucid-Nuro deal adds to more than a dozen partnerships that Uber has announced with autonomous vehicle tech developers and carmakers, including Waymo LLC and Volkswagen Group of America, as it aims to be the go-to commercial app for robotaxis.
Last two weeks, Uber announced a partnership with Chinese AV maker Baidu Inc to deploy robotaxis in several non-US markets. Currently autonomous rides are available through the Uber app in Phoenix, Austin,
Atlanta and Abu Dhabi. The substantial investments by Uber further underscore its strategy shift away from developing autonomous technology in-house, as it did under co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, in favour of partnering with and investing in firms that specialise in AV.
Uber has monetised some of its equity stakes in firms such as autonomous freight company Aurora Innovation Inc to fund future investments in the driverless ecosystem, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said.
Competition is intensifying in the still-nascent robotaxi market, with EV giant Tesla Inc rolling out its long-promised service in Austin last month and CEO Elon Musk pledging to expand to other cities.
Uber first partnered with Nuro in 2022 on food delivery robots. The following year Nuro pivoted from building and scaling custom AVs to focusing on developing autonomous software.
The Uber partnership also adds a notable customer for Lucid, one of the few pure play EV makers in the US, as it works to popularise Gravity, its second vehicle model.
The company has been working to amp up production and deliveries and has estimated it will produce 20,000 vehicles in 2025, more than double the year before.
Prototype robotaxis developed by Lucid and Nuro are already in operation on Nuro's Las Vegas closed-circuit testing grounds.
Nuro president Dave Ferguson, who declined to specify the amount of funding it's getting from Uber, told Bloomberg TV in a separate interview that his company and Lucid were able to get a prototype vehicle up and running in about seven weeks.
Winterhoff said Uber chose its SUV because the company can integrate the necessary hardware at its factory.
Nuro's software will be added once Uber receives the vehicles. Winterhoff had said in a call with investors in May that the company was in advanced discussions with partners about using Gravity for autonomous vehicle purposes.
'This is a stepping stone on our journey to expand our tech leadership from EV and licensing into partnerships in other areas,' Winterhoff said. 'A lot can happen in six years. I really see this as the first starting point.'
Lucid also has been working on advanced driver systems and announced earlier this year that it had partnered with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
Winterhoff said the company still plans to work on its own autonomous and driver assistance technology. This week Lucid separately announced it's adding hands-free drive and lane change assist to its software suite. — Bloomberg
This article first appeared in The Malaysian Reserve weekly print edition
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