Uber will make investments $300m in electrical automobile maker Lucid in a robotaxi deal that goals to start out with one main US metropolis late subsequent yr.
The 2 corporations introduced the brand new partnership on Thursday.
Over six years beginning in 2026, Uber will purchase and deploy over 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs that will probably be geared up with autonomous automobile (AV) expertise from startup Nuro, the three corporations mentioned in a press release.
The settlement illustrates the renewed plans and push for financing for self-driving cabs, years after a primary wave of autonomous driving funding produced solely a restricted variety of automobiles. Tesla has just lately launched a robotaxi trial in Austin, and Alphabet’s driverless taxi unit, Waymo, is rushing up its growth.
As a part of their introduced deal, Uber will make investments tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in Lucid and Nuro, which provide self-driving expertise to carmakers, the joint assertion mentioned. Of that, $300m will go to Lucid, the EV maker mentioned in a separate submitting to the US Securities and Alternate Fee on Thursday.
Lucid shares surged about 39 p.c as of 11:15am in New York (15:15 GMT). That they had fallen about 24 p.c this yr.
Uber’s sports bulletins transfer underscores its renewed push into the robotaxi area after exiting in 2020. Since then, Uber has pivoted to partnerships with a number of expertise builders, together with Waymo and Aurora.
The cope with Lucid follows Uber’s robotaxi settlement in April with Volkswagen, which is able to provide its ID.Buzz vans for industrial service, deliberate for Los Angeles subsequent yr.
However commercialising AV tech has been a lot more durable than anticipated, with excessive prices, tight rules and federal investigations forcing many, together with Basic Motors’ Cruise, to close down.
Some nonetheless within the race embrace Amazon.com’s Zoox, which is testing a robotaxi with out guide controls and plans to launch industrial providers in Las Vegas this yr.
After years of missed deadlines and unmet guarantees, Tesla started a restricted trial with a couple of dozen of its Mannequin Y SUVs in Austin, Texas, final month. CEO Elon Musk has mentioned it can increase the service quickly to different US cities this yr.
Waymo has been growing cautiously for years and operates in a number of US cities with about 1,500 automobiles. It crossed 100 million miles of autonomous driving this month.
A prototype of the Lucid-Nuro robotaxi is already working autonomously on a closed circuit at Nuro’s testing facility in Las Vegas, the businesses mentioned.
“We’re increasing past our conventional EV expertise management and dealing on partnerships and going now into areas that previously we’ve not likely targeted on,” Lucid’s interim CEO Marc Winterhoff informed the Reuters information company.
Nuro, cofounded and led by former Waymo engineers, has expanded from making last-mile supply automobiles to offering its self-driving expertise for industrial and passenger automobiles.
“We’ve different very lively conversations happening the private automobile facet … the place we’d combine Nuro driver into automobiles that can get bought to finish shoppers,” Dave Ferguson, Nuro’s cofounder and president, mentioned.
Nuro will nonetheless want to use for state-level working licences, although it holds some licences from its earlier supply operations, he mentioned.
Individually, Lucid mentioned it had proposed a one-for-10 reverse inventory break up of its class A typical inventory.
Whereas Lucid inventory was up 39 p.c, Uber’s inventory, alternatively, was trending downward at 0.1 p.c from the market open.