Uber will challenge Waymo’s robotaxi dominance in San Francisco

Uber has picked the archetypal metropolis for the motorboat of its caller robotaxi work with Lucid and Nuro. No surprise, it’s San Francisco.

The companies person already begun on-road investigating aft the transportation of their archetypal vehicle, a Lucid Gravity SUV modified with Nuro’s self-driving software. But they volition inactive request to get the driverless operational permits from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, arsenic good arsenic a ridehailing permits from the California Public Utilities Commission, earlier they are allowed to judge paying passengers successful their vehicles. The companies accidental they person updated policymakers and regulators “at each level” connected their progress.

Earlier this year, Lucid, Uber, and Nuro announced a monolithic robotaxi deal that would spot the deployment of 20,000 autonomous vehicles successful the US implicit the adjacent six years. The fleet volition beryllium owned by Uber oregon a third-party fleet absorption partner.

“The Bay Area has agelong been the birthplace of transformative technology, and it’s lone fitting that Uber’s next-generation robotaxi programme with Lucid and Nuro volition statesman present – launching to the nationalist adjacent year,” said Sachin Kansal, Uber’s main merchandise officer, successful a statement.

Lucid precocious delivered the archetypal engineering prototypes to Nuro, respective of which person already been retrofitted with each the tech needed for driverless operations, the companies say. They program connected having “over 100 robotaxis” arsenic portion of their engineering fleet successful the coming months. Nuro volition instrumentality the pb connected investigating and validation, including simulation, closed-course testing, and on-road tests with quality information drivers down the wheel.

In immoderate sense, this is Uber snatching backmost immoderate of the marketplace stock it mislaid to Waymo since the Alphabet-owned institution ditched the waitlist and opened up its robotaxis to the broader nationalist successful 2024. An investigation of recognition paper data recovered that Waymo’s marketplace stock was fundamentally adjacent with Lyft’s successful San Francisco successful December 2024, but lone for trips that started and ended successful Waymo’s operating domain.

Of course, Uber and Waymo are besides collaborating successful Austin and Atlanta, wherever Waymo’s robotaxis are disposable exclusively connected Uber’s app. It volition beryllium absorbing to spot however that narration develops — oregon deteriorates — arsenic the 2 companies travel into nonstop contention with each other.