Uber is investing big to deploy fully autonomous robotaxis, Initial deployment is expected to begin in San Francisco and Miami within 2 years.
Rivian Automotive and Uber Technologies announced a partnership to help accelerate both companies’ autonomous vehicle plans.
Source: Rivian Newsroom Media
Both companies expecting to deploy 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis in the first phase. Initial deployments are expected to begin in San Francisco and Miami in 2028 and will expand to 25 cities by 2031.
Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, depending on certain autonomous milestones by specific dates to build a fully autonomous fleet of robotaxis. An initial $300 million investment has been committed to following signing, subject to regulatory approval.
Source: Rivian Newsroom Media
These robotaxis will be available exclusively through the Uber platform.
After all the milestones are achieved, the companies will deploy thousands of unsupervised robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031.
The companies also have option to negotiate purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030.
Excited about their partnership with Uber, RJ Scaringe, Founder and CEO of Rivian said, “Our state of the art in-house inference platform, and our multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of autonomy over the next couple of years.”
“We’re big believers in Rivian’s approach—designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi added.
