Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco

If you spot a Lucid Gravity SUV blinged retired with sensors — and a self-driving strategy developed by Nuro — driving astir San Francisco, chances are that’s an Uber worker taking a ride.

Select Uber employees tin present petition a thrust successful a Lucid robotaxi done the Uber app, the latest signifier of investigating up of a planned nationalist motorboat aboriginal this year. Nuro, which provided the update in a blog posted Monday, told TechCrunch the vehicles are operating successful autonomous mode and person a quality information relation down the instrumentality arsenic backup.

While this is acold from a nationalist launch, it does awesome the companies’ advancement since announcing a partnership and multi-million investment successful July 2025. Uber invested $300 cardinal successful Lucid and separately agreed to bargain “at least” 20,000 of the EV maker’s caller Gravity SUV implicit the adjacent six years.

Those EVs are equipped with Nuro’s autonomous conveyance system, which is powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. The Lucid Gravity robotaxi, which was revealed successful January, is outfitted with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that assistance the self-driving strategy comprehend the existent satellite situation and run successful it.

Uber besides invested an undisclosed “multi-hundred-million dollar” magnitude into Nuro.

The program is for Uber to ain and run — apt with the assistance from a 3rd enactment — the premium robotaxi service. Production of these modified Lucid Gravity vehicles is expected to statesman successful precocious 2026, according to a regulatory filing posted past year.

Nuro completed closed-course investigating and started its archetypal nationalist roadworthy investigating of the autonomous Lucid Gravity SUVs precocious past year. Nuro present has 100 Lucid Gravity SUVs outfitted with its self-driving strategy successful the engineering fleet, utilized to stitchery real-world information and trial autonomous driving crossed aggregate U.S. cities and states.

According to Nuro, the worker trial rides assistance the squad measure however the autonomy stack, vehicle, and rider acquisition enactment unneurotic and relation successful a unrecorded operating environment. It besides allows the squad to trial however good the conveyance handles rider pickups and dropoffs, a notoriously tricky cognition successful autonomous ride-hailing.