Uber is investing a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into EV maker Lucid and autonomous car expertise startup Nuro in a bid to launch its personal premium robotaxi service.
Below the deal introduced Thursday, Uber will make investments $300 million in Lucid and individually purchase “no less than” 20,000 of the EV maker’s new Gravity SUV over the following six years. These EVs might be outfitted with Nuro’s autonomous car system, and the automobiles might be owned and operated by Uber or its third-party fleet companions. Uber plans to launch a robotaxi service in a serious U.S. metropolis subsequent yr.
Manufacturing of those modified Lucid Gravity automobiles is predicted to start in late 2026, in accordance with a regulatory submitting.
Uber can be investing an undisclosed “multi-hundred-million greenback” quantity into Nuro. One supply conversant in the settlement mentioned the quantity is greater than Uber’s funding in Lucid.
The settlement between the three firms was a yr within the making, Nuro co-founder and president Dave Ferguson informed TechCrunch.
“I feel that’s in all probability a mirrored image of how meaty it’s,” he mentioned, including that Uber was trying to make a really massive dedication to a robotaxi program, and hung out with nearly each AV firm to search out probably the most appropriate associate.
“We have been thrilled that, on the finish of all that, we have been the associate that was chosen,” he mentioned.
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Ferguson mentioned engineers at Lucid and Nuro have already made progress on the venture. The businesses have been testing a prototype driverless car on a closed monitor at Nuro’s proving grounds in Las Vegas.
Lucid Gravity SUVs are perfect as a result of the automobiles are already outfitted with type of {hardware} redundancies required for a Stage 3 automated driving system, Ferguson mentioned. Stage 3 is a designation by the Society of Car Engineers that permits the motive force to take their eyes off the street and fingers off the wheel in sure situations.
The Nuro-equipped Gravity automobiles might be Stage 4, which implies the car can deal with all facets of driving in sure situations with out human intervention. Nonetheless, the added redundancies made it “nearly a delight” as Nuro built-in its self-driving system into the automobiles, he mentioned.
Uber has spent the previous two years locking in partnerships with autonomous car expertise firms, overlaying the spectrum of how self-driving techniques will be utilized to the bodily world. The ride-hailing big has partnered with greater than 18 firms globally, throughout ride-hailing, supply, and trucking. Simply this yr alone, it introduced offers with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Could Mobility Volkswagen, in addition to Chinese language self-driving corporations Momenta, WeRide, and Baidu.
Uber’s most high-profile partnership within the U.S. — and one that’s commercially working immediately — is with Waymo. The businesses supply a “Waymo on Uber” service in Austin and Atlanta.
This deal illustrates simply how a lot cash Uber is keen to spend money on hopes of tapping into, and even dominating, the burgeoning autonomous car market.
The settlement can be a validation for Nuro, a startup that has raised greater than $2 billion from high-profile buyers since its based in 2016. Nuro initially centered on making use of its AV tech to a fleet of low-speed, on-road supply bots, which it had developed. The corporate burned by means of money and after going through tightening capital markets, went by means of a number of rounds of layoffs in 2022 and 2023.
Final yr, Nuro pivoted its enterprise technique to focus extra on the startup’s core autonomous driving expertise. It ditched the low pace supply mannequin and got down to license its autonomous car expertise to automakers and mobility suppliers, like ride-hail and supply firms. The choice to only deal with growing and licensing the AV system allowed Nuro to increase its runway from 1.5 years to three.5 years, the corporate mentioned on the time.
However the firm nonetheless wanted a licensing deal to show out its shift. The Uber settlement, together with a number of others which can be within the works, in accordance with Ferguson, suggests the pivot is paying off.
