{"id":266176,"date":"2026-04-13T21:28:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/266176\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T21:28:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:28:31","slug":"uber-and-nuro-begin-testing-premium-robotaxi-service-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/266176\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you spot a Lucid Gravity SUV blinged out with sensors \u2014 and a self-driving system developed by Nuro \u2014 driving around San Francisco, chances are that\u2019s an Uber employee taking a ride.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Select Uber employees can now request a ride in a Lucid robotaxi through the Uber app, the latest phase of testing ahead of a planned public launch later this year. Nuro, which provided the update <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nuro.ai\/blog\/robotaxi-employee-test-rides-begin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">in a blog<\/a> posted Monday, told TechCrunch the vehicles are operating in autonomous mode and have a human safety operator behind the wheel as backup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While this is far from a public launch, it does signal the companies\u2019 progress since announcing a <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/07\/17\/uber-makes-multi-million-dollar-investment-in-lucid-nuro-to-build-robotaxi-service\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">partnership and multi-million investment<\/a> in July 2025. Uber invested $300 million in Lucid and separately agreed to buy \u201cat least\u201d 20,000 of the EV maker\u2019s new Gravity SUV over the next six years. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those EVs are equipped with Nuro\u2019s autonomous vehicle system, which is powered by Nvidia\u2019s Drive AGX Thor computer. The Lucid Gravity robotaxi, which was <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/01\/05\/this-is-ubers-new-robotaxi-from-lucid-and-nuro\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revealed in January<\/a>, is outfitted with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that help the self-driving system perceive the real world environment and operate in it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Uber also invested an undisclosed \u201cmulti-hundred-million dollar\u201d amount into Nuro.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The plan is for Uber to own and operate \u2014 likely with the help from a third party \u2014 the premium robotaxi service. Production of these modified Lucid Gravity vehicles is expected to begin in late 2026,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/ix?doc=\/Archives\/edgar\/data\/0001811210\/000110465925068552\/tm2520956d2_8k.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">according to a regulatory filing<\/a> posted last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nuro completed closed-course testing and started its first public road testing of the autonomous Lucid Gravity SUVs late last year. Nuro now has 100 Lucid Gravity SUVs outfitted with its self-driving system in the engineering fleet, used to gather real-world data and test autonomous driving across multiple U.S. cities and states.<\/p>\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to Nuro, the employee test rides help the team evaluate how the autonomy stack, vehicle, and rider experience work together and function in a live operating environment. It also allows the team to test how well the vehicle handles rider pickups and dropoffs, a notoriously tricky operation in autonomous ride-hailing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you spot a Lucid Gravity SUV blinged out with sensors \u2014 and a self-driving system developed by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[39316,63944,10651,5989,101,103,102,104,106,105,3986],"class_list":{"0":"post-266176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-lucid","9":"tag-nuro","10":"tag-nvidia","11":"tag-robotaxis","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-uber"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}