Uber is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in EV maker Lucid and Autonomous Vehicle Technology Startup Nuro to launch its own premium Robotaxi service.
Under the deal announced Thursday, Uber will invest $300 million in Lucid and will “at least” buy 20,000 new gravity SUVs from EV Maker separately over the next six years. These EVs will be equipped with Nuro’s self-driving vehicle systems, and the vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or its third-party fleet partners. Uber plans to launch Robotaxi services in major US cities next year.
Production of these revised Bright Id gravity cars is expected to begin in the second half of 2026, according to regulatory filings.
Uber is also investing private “least millions of dollars” in Nuro. Sources familiar with the contract said the amount was more than Uber’s investment in Lucid.
President Dave Ferguson, co-founder of Nuro, told TechCrunch that the three companies had a one year agreement.
“I think it probably reflects how meat it was,” he says, adding that Uber is trying to make a very big commitment to the Robotaxi program, spending his time finding the most appropriate partners with almost every AV company.
“We were excited to see that at the end of it all, we were our chosen partners,” he said.
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Ferguson said Lucid and Nuro engineers have already made progress on the project. The company is testing prototype unmanned vehicles on closed trucks at Nuro certification sites in Las Vegas.
Lucid’s gravity SUV is ideal as the vehicle is already equipped with the hardware redundancy required for a level 3 autonomous driving system, Ferguson said. (Level 3 is designated by the Automobile Engineers Association, allowing drivers to take their eyes off the road and release their hands from the steering wheel under certain conditions.)
Gravity vehicles equipped with Nuro are at level 4. This means that the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving under certain conditions without human intervention. Still, the added redundancy has become “almost a joy” as Nuro integrated its autonomous driving system into the vehicle, Ferguson said.
For the past two years, Uber has been locking in partnerships with autonomous vehicle technology companies that cover the spectrum of ways to apply autonomous driving systems to the physical world. The riding giant has partnered with more than 18 companies worldwide across the world, across rides, delivery and trucking. This year alone, they announced contracts with Michigan Maymobility and Ann Arbor with Volkswagen, Chinese autonomous driving companies Momenta, Weride and Baidu.
Uber’s most famous partnership in the United States, and today it operates commercially, comes with Waymo. The company offers “Uber’s Waymo” services in Austin and Atlanta.
The deal shows how much Uber is investing in hopes of taking advantage of and even controlling the fast-growing self-driving car market.
The deal is also a testimony of Nuro, which has raised over $2 billion from high-profile investors since it was founded in 2016. The startup initially focused on applying AV technology to a fleet of on-road delivery bots at slow speeds. However, the company fired cash reserves and implemented multiple layoffs in 2022 and 2023 after facing difficult capital markets.
Last year, Nuro pivoted its business strategy to focus more on startup core autonomous driving technology. He abandoned the slow delivery model and set out to license autonomous vehicle technology to automakers and mobility providers (such as passenger companies and delivery companies). With the decision to focus solely on developing and licensing AV systems, NURO could extend the runway from 1.5 to 3.5 years, the company said.
However, the company still needed a licensing agreement to prove its shift. According to Ferguson, the Uber agreement, along with several other agreements in the film, suggests that Pivot is paying off.
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