With plans to deploy 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis, Rivian Automotive and Uber Technologies have formed a partnership to accelerate the autonomous vehicle agenda of both companies. Initial deployments are expected to begin in San Francisco and Miami in 2028 to expand to 25 cities by 2031.
Uber will invest up to US$1.25bn in Rivian through 2031, subject to certain autonomous milestones being met by specific dates, building toward a scaled, fully autonomous fleet of Rivian R2 robotaxis, which will be available exclusively through the Uber platform. Uber has committed to an initial US$300m investment following signing, subject to regulatory approval.
Should all milestones be met, the companies will have deployed thousands of unsupervised Rivian R2 robotaxis across 25 cities in the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031. Uber has the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles beginning in 2030.
R J Scaringe, the founder and CEO of Rivian, said, “We couldn’t be more excited about this partnership with Uber. It will help accelerate our path to Level 4 autonomy to create one of the safest and most convenient autonomous platforms in the world. The scale of Rivian’s growing data flywheel, coupled with RAP1, our state-of-the-art in-house inference platform, and our multimodal perception platform, make us incredibly excited for the rapid advance of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, added, “We’re big believers in Rivian’s approach – designing the vehicle, compute platform and software stack together while maintaining end-to-end control of scaled manufacturing and supply in the US. That vertical integration, combined with data from their growing consumer vehicle base and experience managing the complexities of commercial fleets, gives us conviction to set these ambitious but achievable targets.”
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