Uber invests hundreds of millions of dollars in EV Maker Lucid and autonomous NURO start -up technology in an effort to launch its own Premium Robotaxi service.
According to an agreement announced on Thursday, Uber will invest $ 300 million in clear and buy “at least” at least “20,000 from EV Maker’s new SUV in the next six years. These ECs will be equipped with Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system and the vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or the partners of the third party fleet. Uber plans to launch a romance service in a large US city next year.
The production of these modified clear gravity vehicles is expected to begin at the end of 2026, According to regulatory deposit.
Uber also invests an amount that has not been announced “many hundred million dollars” in Nuro. A source familiar with the agreement said the amount is more than Uber’s investment in Lucid.
The agreement between the three companies was a year in production, Nuro’s co -founder and President Dave Ferguson told TechCrunch.
“I think this is probably a reflection of how much meaty it is,” he said, adding that Uber was looking for a great commitment to a robot program and spent time with almost every AV company to find the most appropriate partner.
“We were excited that, at the end of all of them, we were the partner chosen,” he said.
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Ferguson said Lucid and Nuro engineers have already made progress in the project. Companies have tasted an original vehicle without a closed drive at the Nuro Proving Grounds in Las Vegas.
Lucid SUVs are ideal because vehicles are already equipped with the type of material redundancies needed for an automated level 3 driving system, Ferguson said. (Level 3 is a name from the Car This allows the driver to take his eyes off the road and hands from the steering wheel in certain conditions.)
NURO -equipped vehicles will be level 4, which means that the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving in certain conditions without human intervention. Still, additional redundancies made it “almost a pleasure”, as Nuro incorporated the self-guiding system into vehicles, Ferguson said.
Uber has spent the last two years lock in partnerships with autonomous vehicle technology companies, covering the spectrum of how self-guidance systems can be implemented in the natural world. The driving giant has worked with more than 18 companies worldwide throughout driving, tradition and truck. Only in this year, he announced the agreements with Ann Arbor, Mocility Volkswagen based in Michigan, as well as Chinese self-guiding companies Momenta, Weride and Baidu.
Uber’s most profile company in the US-and the one that works today-is with Waymo. Companies offer a “Waymo On Uber” service to Austin and Atlanta.
This agreement shows how much money Uber is willing to invest in the hope of exploiting, and even dominating, the growing autonomous vehicle market.
The agreement is also ratification for Nuro, which increased more than $ 2 billion from high profile investors since it was founded in 2016. The starting initially focused on implementing AV technology on low-speed fleet, on-road bots, which it had developed. However, the company burns through its reserves and after facing difficult capital markets, it has carried out multiple rounds of redundancies in 2022 and 2023.
Last year, Nuro is rotating its business strategy to focus more on basic autonomous driving technology. It broke the low -speed delivery model and raised the license for autonomous car technology in automakers and mobility providers, such as driving and delivery companies. The decision to focus only on the development and authorization of the AV system allowed Nuro to expand its corridor from 1.5 years to 3.5 years, the company said at the time.
But the company still needed a licensing deal to prove its shift. The Uber deal, along with many others in the projects, according to Ferguson, suggests that the axis is performing.
