Uber Is Getting Back in the Robotaxi Game, With Help From Lucid Motors and Nuro

Hot off the heels of its hands-free driver assistance feature update for DreamDrive Pro, Lucid has announced that much of the same underlying technology will be used for a new robotaxi service. Lucid is not going at it alone, as this will be a joint effort with autonomous technology developer Nuro and ride-hailing and food-delivery platform Uber. The trio will team up to create a global-scale robotaxi service. It also plans to launch in late 2026 in “a major U.S. city.”

The last part that gives us a little pause. Outside of the ambitious late-2026 launch window for this all-new venture is the ambitious expectations of scale. Over the next six years, Uber aims to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid vehicles equipped with the Nuro Driver autonomous system. Considering that the partnership hasn’t even named its first “major U.S. city” yet, let alone successive locations for operation, that’s a rather big number to hit.

For context, Waymo started its autonomous taxi service in 2018. But in the seven years it has been in operation, Waymo has only fielded 1,500 robotaxis between Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, Texas, and it is only looking at adding 500 more by 2026. For Lucid, Nuro, and Uber to spin up 10 times that eventual figure in less time seems ... like a stiff goal.

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Still, we do feel slightly better about this venture than Tesla’s Robotaxi. Nuro has proven that its Nuro Driver AI is capable, thanks to its autonomous delivery service. And credit to both Nuro and Lucid for not just diving straight into autonomous driving on public roads with still-under-development tech, as Tesla continues to do every day with its Full Self Driving (Supervised) software in customer cars and the FSD-based tech powering its upstart robotaxi service in Austin.

We also know that this robotaxi won’t be an all-new vehicle that needs to be developed between now and 2026. This partnership will utilize the new Lucid Gravity SUV for service vehicles, much like how Tesla's nascent robotaxi service simply employs regular Model Y SUVs, and Waymo has a mixture of Jaguar I-Paces and Chrysler minivans.

With the Gravity's 450-mile range, it should mean this Uber-backed robotaxi service should also face less downtime than most of the other robotaxi vehicles out there right now. It also means that Lucid might meet the 20,000-vehicle target several years down the road, as the Gravity is in regular production, even if that timeline is, again, ambitious.

We also know that Uber is funding the venture, but an exact figure hasn’t been announced. Lucid says the investment is in the “multi-hundred-million” dollar range. We also can’t deny having Uber backing is a huge step considering its expansive application for being more than just a ride-hailing service with Uber Eats, Uber Direct—its white-label package delivery service—and its Courier same-day package service. Uber is also no stranger to the robotaxi idea, having tested a vehicle around 2017 using a fleet of modified Volvo XC90s.

That testing ended after a fatal incident in Arizona in March 2018, after which then-Governor Doug Ducey suspended the company's self-driving license in that state. Uber's test vehicles at the time had human backups at the wheel, and it was ultimately determined that Uber was not criminally responsible in the fatal accident. The human backup driver was found at fault, however, and was charged with negligent homicide and later plead guilty to a lesser charge and served three years’ probation. Following that incident, Uber then sold its Advanced Technologies Group—the business front for Ubers autonomous vehicles—to Aurora Innovation in December 2020. Now, it seems, Uber wants back in the autonomous vehicle game, and it is linking up with Lucid and Nuro to do so.