A year after launching a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide and partner Uber can finally call this driverless service.
The companies said the commercial robotaxi service, which will no longer have a human safety operator at the wheel, is open to the public and will begin with routes on Yas Island, a tourist area that is home to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Formula 1 race track.
The Robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi will operate similarly to Uber’s partnership with Waymo in Austin.
Uber riders who choose Uber Comfort or UberX in Abu Dhabi can be matched with a WeRide robotaxi. Riders who want to increase their chances of being matched with a fully autonomous vehicle can select the “Autonomous” option in the Uber app. Uber and WeRide also work with fleet partner Tawasul.
The launch comes a month after WeRide secured a federal license from the United Arab Emirates to conduct commercial driverless robot operations. WeRide and Uber plan to expand their driverless services to cover additional areas in downtown Abu Dhabi.
“Today’s fully autonomous launch in Abu Dhabi represents a historic milestone in transportation as the first driverless AV installation outside the US or China,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s head of autonomous mobility and delivery.
Uber has spent the past two years closing partnerships with 20 self-driving technology companies in various countries, including the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
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These partnerships have extended beyond the realm of robotaxis. Uber’s offerings cover the full range of self-driving applications, including delivery and trucking. This year alone, it announced partnerships with Michigan-based Ann Arbor, May Mobility and Volkswagen, Chinese self-driving companies Momenta, Pony.ai and Baidu, as well as a recent deal to create a premium robotaxi service using self-driving Lucid Gravity SUVs from San Francisco-based startup Nuro.
These agreements are finally starting to materialize in commercial services. For example, Uber and Waymo launched a robotaxi service earlier this year in Austin. Now, Uber has expanded to the Middle East with WeRide in Abu Dhabi — with even more cities to come, including Dubai.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicted in the company’s third-quarter earnings report that there will be deployments of autonomous vehicles on Uber’s network in at least 10 cities until the end of 2026.
Uber and WeRide previously shared plans to expand to 15 cities across the Middle East and Europe, eventually scaling to thousands of robo-taxis. That would represent a huge leap for WeRide, which currently has more than 150 robotaxis in the region.
