Uber announced that it has teamed up with Lucid, an electric vehicle manufacturer, and Nuro, an autonomous vehicle startup, in an effort to roll out 20,000 driverless taxicabs, or robotaxis.
In exchange for a multi-hundred-million-dollar investment, Nuro will engineer the autonomous driving under the partnership. In the meantime, Uber will spend $300 million on Lucid to produce EVs that use Nuro’s technology.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Nuro and Lucid on this new robotaxi program, purpose-built just for the Uber platform, to safely bring the magic of autonomous driving to more people across the world,” CNBC said, quoting Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Marc Winterhoff, interim CEO of Lucid, described the collaboration as a chance for the EV manufacturer to compete in a “wholly new” addressable market that it hasn’t yet broken into in an interview with CNBC.