Rivian said Thursday it is working with Uber to build thousands of robotaxis based on its upcoming R2 SUV. The deal could be worth $1.25 billion for the EV maker.
Uber is kicking off the partnership with an initial investment of $300 million in Rivian and “expects to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotoxins” before the planned launch in San Francisco and Miami in 2028.
Uber will have the option to buy up to 40,000 more autonomous R2 SUVs from Rivian starting in 2030. The two companies said they plan to roll out the robotaxis in “25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031.” The fleet will be exclusively available on Uber’s network, according to the companies.
While the deal is potentially lucrative for Rivian, it is fraught with risks and challenges.
Rivian has yet to start production of the R2 SUV. said production is expected to begin in June. Nor has it tested and developed an autonomous driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the bar even higher, the robotaxi is supposed to be built at Rivian’s factory in Georgia, which is still under construction.
Those obstacles don’t seem to have dampened Rivian’s resolve or that of its founder and CEO, RJ Scaringe, who has made self-driving technology a top priority for the company. He even hinted at the company’s inaugural “Autonomy & Artificial Intelligence Day” in December that this work allows the startup to “pursue opportunities in the ride-share space.”
Indeed, Scaringe was behind the company’s decision in 2021 to abandon its previous rules-based framework for driver assistance in favor of an AI-first strategy that uses large language models to train the system how to perceive and navigate the world. This automated driving system is designed to learn from fleet data and become increasingly autonomous.
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The result, called the Rivian Autonomy Platform, debuted in 2024 on the automaker’s second-generation R1 vehicles. It’s the foundation of Rivian’s plan to improve capabilities over time from hands-free driving on select highways to a point-to-point navigation feature expected later this year that aims to automate driving controls on entire routes.
Ultimately, Rivian wants to offer a hands-off, eyes-off system through a hardware upgrade, including the addition of a lidar sensor and an “autonomy computer” that can process 5 billion pixels per second. This upgraded hardware will be released in a version of the R2 SUV in late 2026.
As capable as these features are, they are still not considered fully autonomous driving systems, in which the driver is never expected to take control.
However, the startup wants to eventually offer this level of automated driving. At the company’s autonomy day, it unveiled plans for what it calls “personal L4,” a nod to the level defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers at which an autonomous vehicle can operate in a specific area without human intervention.
Automated driving remains one of Rivian’s biggest focus areas, Scaringe said on stage at SXSW 2026 last week. “Our path to get to 2027 is something we’re spending more money on than anything else,” Scaringe said.
And he is optimistic about the rate of progress.
“If you looked at the progress in autonomy over the last five years and tried to use that as a rough metric or gauge to predict the next five years, you’d be wildly wrong. The rate of progress is very different looking forward five years than looking back five years. The past, in this case, is not a good predictor of the future.”
Rivian isn’t the first electric vehicle startup that Uber has tapped to build robotaxis. Last year, the ride-hail giant said Lucid Motors would partner with autonomous vehicle technology company Nuro to build a robot taxi based on Lucid’s Gravity SUV. These robotaxis are expected to be commercially deployed by the end of this year in San Francisco.
Uber has partnered with more than 25 dedicated robotaxi or autonomous vehicle companies around the world. Its most notable partnership to date is with Waymo, which includes the Alphabet-owned company’s robotaxis operating on Uber’s app in Austin and Atlanta. Uber also has deals with Motional and Baidu and is a major investor in UK startup Wayve.
