Do 20,000 Lucid Robotaxis for Uber Give Lucid (and Uber) a Path Forward?

---

---

Last Updated on: 21st July 2025, 12:08 pm

Update: Steve Hanley wrote a longer piece introducing this partnership, so I recommend reading that one. I am putting text in this article in bold that is additive to Steve’s article, extra questions and thoughts.

Robotaxis are all the rage, popping up left and right from one company or another. One company that seems to be involved in most of these announcements lately is Uber. It clearly wants to dominate the ride-hailing scene, and it’s been quick to offer robotaxi companies an easy way to get more riders — after all, approximately 150 million people have the Uber app, and almost none of us have any robotaxi apps. But I did not see this partnership coming….

Lucid and Nuro have partnered with Uber to launch more than 20,000 robotaxis in dozens of markets in the next 6 years. That’s quite an interesting plan!

Naturally, these would be Lucid vehicles. One would think, hey, this is a way Lucid could actually grow its sales. Though, 20,000 vehicles spread across 6 years is not a high volume. The bigger win for the company would be if this partnership goes well and grows to much more than 20,000 vehicles in 6 years.

The autonomous driving software comes from Nuro. These robotaxis will be using the Nuro Driver™ Level 4 autonomy system. Uber or its 3rd-party partners will own the Lucid vehicles.

Going a bit under the radar, there’s already a Lucid–Nuro robotaxi prototype in operation — it’s operating on a closed circuit at Nuro’s Las Vegas proving grounds. “As part of a deepening relationship with each partner, Uber plans to make multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both Nuro and Lucid,” Uber adds. In other words, Uber may have finally found its robotaxi company to buy — in the form of two companies. For now, though, it’s starting out as investments in the self-driving side of things (Nuro) and the car side of things (Lucid).

“Autonomous vehicles have enormous potential to transform our cities for the better,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. “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.” (I bet you are — no more human drivers to pay or manage.)

“This investment from Uber further validates Lucid’s fully redundant zonal architecture and highly capable platform as ideal for autonomous vehicles, and our industry-leading range and spacious well-appointed interiors, as ideal for ridesharing,” said Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO at Lucid. “This is the start of our path to extend our innovation and technology leadership into this multi-trillion-dollar market.” Lucid does seem to be a tech leader in some regards. It’s bigger challenge has been driving down costs and increasing volumes. Will this help it to do so?

“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 U.S. cities and states. By combining our self-driving technology with Lucid’s advanced vehicle architecture and Uber’s global platform, we’re proud to enable a robotaxi service designed to reach millions of people around the world.”

The first Nuro–Lucid–Uber robotaxis will be launched in 2026. More details can be found here.