Uber announced on Wednesday that it is launching its Robotaxi service in Dallas as the company prepares to introduce its Waymo rival into other major cities next year. But it won’t be totally human-less yet.
The company said in its news release that vehicles, provided with partner Avride, will operate in a 9-square-mile area of Dallas starting in the Downtown area when a user requests an UberX, Comfort, or Comfort Electric through the app after users update their preferences to include robotaxi options. The service will be available at the same cost as a regular trip on one of those Uber levels. Plans are pending for an expansion to other Dallas-area neighborhoods.
However, Uber says it will use human supervision behind the wheel of the Avride vehicles before moving to fully driverless operation. It did not give a timetable for that change.
Uber is competing in an increasingly crowded “self-driving” market as Waymo rapidly expands its service to other cities and now airports, Tesla’s also-human-supervised Robotaxi seeks approval in new markets, and Amazon’s Zoox expands into San Francisco last month. The original ride-hailing company has spent this year backing its plans with targeted cities and new partners.
The Lucid Gravity electric SUV will be the basis for a planned fleet of 20,000 Uber robotaxis over the next six years, following a July announcement. That release included news that Uber was also making an investment in Lucid as well as the robotics manufacturer Nuro. In October, Nvidia announced a deal with Uber to build 100,000 autonomous vehicles starting in 2027.
Uber’s deal with Nuro has already yielded closed-course testing in Las Vegas for vehicles ahead of a launch in “dozens of markets around the world,” according to the company’s statement in July.
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