Lucid Group - using software from Nuro - and Uber Technologies have announced a global ‘robotaxi’ programme exclusively for the Uber ride-hailing platform.
The robotaxi service, to start next year “in a major US city”, will use the electric Lucid Gravity passenger car, equipped with a Nuro Driver Level 4 autonomy system. The Nuro Driver, from Nuro, will enable the Lucid Gravity to operate at Level 4 autonomy.
Uber aims to deploy more than 20,000 Lucid vehicles equipped with the Nuro Driver over six years. The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or its third-party fleet partners and made available to riders exclusively via the Uber platform.
Lucid, based in Silicon Valley in the US state of California, develops advanced electric vehicles including the Lucid Air and new Lucid Gravity with an estimated driving range of 450 miles, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both vehicles are assembled at its factory in the state of Arizona.
Nuro will lead the development and validation of a comprehensive safety case across dozens of categories using simulations, closed-course testing and supervised on-road testing to verify that the robotaxi will operate safely.
The company, founded in 2016, licenses its core technology, the Nuro Driver, to support a wide range of applications, from robotaxis and commercial fleets to personally-owned vehicles.
The first Lucid-Nuro robotaxi prototype is already operating autonomously on a closed circuit at Nuro’s Las Vegas proving grounds. The companies said that Uber now plans to make multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both Nuro and Lucid.
Essential hardware will be integrated into the Lucid Gravity on Lucid’s assembly line and will subsequently receive Nuro’s software when the vehicle is commissioned by Uber.
“Autonomous vehicles have enormous potential to transform our cities for the better,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber.
Marc Winterhoff, interim CEO at Lucid, says: “This is the start of our path to extend our innovation and technology leadership into this multi-trillion-dollar market.”
“We believe this partnership will demonstrate what’s possible when proven AV technology meets real-world scale,” said Jiajun Zhu, co-founder and CEO at Nuro.
“Nuro has spent nearly a decade building an AI-first autonomy system that’s safe, scalable and vehicle-agnostic, proven through five years of driverless deployments across multiple US cities and states. By combining our self-driving technology with Lucid’s advanced vehicle architecture and Uber’s global platform [enables] a robotaxi service designed to reach millions of people around the world.”