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After six years on the sidelines, Uber is making a clear push to deploy its own robotaxis again, with deal structures that seem designed to limit its risk.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a significant reversal from a few years ago, when Uber sold its self\u2011driving unit, ATG, after a fatal crash in 2018 and years of heavy losses. Since then, Uber has gone a different path\u2014inking deals with nearly every major robotaxi player in the market, from Waymo to WeRide<\/a>. It\u2019s only Tesla<\/a> that doesn\u2019t work with the ride-hail company, though that wasn\u2019t for lack of trying on Uber\u2019s part.\u00a0<\/p>\n In all of those deals, Uber has integrated other companies\u2019 AV fleets into its app; the AV companies own and operate the cars. That\u2019s changing.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, there was the deal with Lucid Motors in 2025 to purchase and deploy up to 20,000 vehicles equipped with Nuro\u2019s autonomy stack. On Thursday,<\/strong> Uber announced a similar deal with Rivian for its yet\u2011to\u2011be\u2011built R2 platform. The company is planning to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2\u2011based robotaxis if Rivian meets development and validation milestones, with an option to scale to 50,000, according to SEC filings and company statements. Uber is also making a $300 million investment in the company as part of the deal, and potentially another $950 million more should Rivian meet certain, undisclosed development requirements. Rivian has also agreed not to sell fully autonomous vehicles to Uber\u2019s direct ride\u2011hailing rivals for a specified exclusivity period, according to the SEC filing.<\/p>\n Uber is planning to deploy the new fleet in San Francisco and Miami in 2028, and hopes to be in 25 cities by 2031, the companies said.\u00a0Uber said in January it was still planning to deploy Lucid vehicles later this year.<\/p>\n To be clear, there\u2019s still a lot that will need to happen first for the Rivian deal. Rivian laid out what its R2 autonomy platform will look like in December\u2014a multi-modal sensor suite with 11 cameras, five radars, and one LiDAR that is built on two of Rivian\u2019s in-house RAP1 chips\u2014but it still has yet to finish developing it or to start production of the new vehicle. Language in the SEC filings suggest that Rivian still has a long way to go, noting that Rivian \u201cintends to develop\u201d an autonomous driving system featuring its own Level 4 system as well as \u201ccertain technology\u201d that will let Rivian vehicles integrate into ridehailing and logistics networks. Rivian and its suppliers still apparently need to purchase the tooling necessary to manufacture and assemble these vehicles, too, the agreement shows.<\/p>\n