San Francisco-based Uber has struck agreements with more than 20 self-driving car developers – most of them in the past year – including Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon.com’s Zoox.
Uber, which sold its costly in-house self-driving arm in 2020, is pursuing a partnership approach as autonomous car companies begin to scale up production and operations in the next few years. It aims to offer robotaxis with its partners in a total of 15 markets by the end of this year, the company has said, but most won’t begin ramping up until 2027.
Should all milestones in the Rivian deal be reached, the two companies will have deployed thousands of unsupervised robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031, according to the statement.
By committing to purchase some robotaxis, Uber is experimenting with economic returns first-hand as it negotiates with banks or private equity players who may help finance the growing fleets in the future. Uber’s other existing deals include 20,000 Lucid Group vehicles outfitted with Nuro technology, and 5000 Stellantis robotaxis.
For Rivian, the Uber partnership builds on its broader autonomous ambitions. Before the announcement, chief software officer Wassym Bensaid told Bloomberg News at South by Southwest last week that autonomy “is one of the most critical areas of focus of the company”.
In December, the company unveiled an in-house autonomy chip that it plans to install in its upcoming R2 sport utility vehicles alongside a new lidar sensor starting in 2027. The R2 will also include 11 65-megapixel, high-definition cameras and five radar sensors.
In addition to rideshare services, Rivian chief executive officer RJ Scaringe said in December that the automaker is focused on developing self-driving technology for personally owned vehicles, so that it can eventually accomplish daily tasks like picking up children from school or collecting car owners from the airport. It is also open to licensing software to other manufacturers.
Rivian already offers a subscription for its semi-automated driving software, priced at US$2500 for a lifetime purchase or US$49.99 monthly, with plans to continuously expand its capabilities this year. The current subscription product includes features like lane changes on command, or a hands-free setting that lets drivers keep their hands off the wheel while supervising the ride. The company expects to bring auto-parking and on-ramp and off-ramp abilities this year.
Rival electric vehicle makers Tesla and Lucid have had a headstart in embracing the emerging robotaxi market. Tesla has a small fleet of robotaxis in Austin, as well as cars with safety drivers in San Francisco. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also has plans to launch production of its two-seater autonomous Cybercab next month.
During an investor event last week, Lucid CEO Marc Winterhoff said the company is looking to play “a big role” in the robotaxi market as it previewed a two-seater robotaxi prototype called Lunar. The company also said it is in talks to finalise an expanded partnership with Uber that will include the deployment of its upcoming midsize vehicles “at a scale similar to” the Gravity robotaxi programme.
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