{"id":28564,"date":"2025-10-29T13:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T13:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28564\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T13:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T13:11:07","slug":"uber-will-challenge-waymos-robotaxi-dominance-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28564\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber will challenge Waymo\u2019s robotaxi dominance in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

The companies have already begun on-road testing after the delivery of their first vehicle<\/a>, a Lucid Gravity SUV modified with Nuro\u2019s self-driving software. But they will still need to obtain the driverless operational permits from the state\u2019s Department of Motor Vehicles, as well as a ridehailing permits from the California Public Utilities Commission, before they are allowed to accept paying passengers in their vehicles. The companies say they have updated policymakers and regulators \u201cat every level\u201d on their progress.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Lucid, Uber, and Nuro announced a massive robotaxi deal<\/a> that would see the deployment of 20,000 autonomous vehicles in the US over the next six years. The fleet will be owned by Uber or a third-party fleet management partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bay Area has long been the birthplace of transformative technology, and it\u2019s only fitting that Uber\u2019s next-generation robotaxi program with Lucid and Nuro will begin here \u2013 launching to the public next year,\u201d said Sachin Kansal, Uber\u2019s chief product officer, in a statement.<\/p>\n

Lucid recently delivered the first engineering prototypes to Nuro, several of which have already been retrofitted with all the tech needed for driverless operations, the companies say. They plan on having \u201cover 100 robotaxis\u201d as part of their engineering fleet in the coming months. Nuro will take the lead on testing and validation, including simulation, closed-course testing, and on-road tests with human safety drivers behind the wheel.<\/p>\n

In some sense, this is Uber snatching back some of the market share it lost to Waymo since the Alphabet-owned company ditched the waitlist and opened up its robotaxis to the broader public in 2024. An analysis of credit card data<\/a> found that Waymo\u2019s market share was essentially equal with Lyft\u2019s in San Francisco in December 2024, but only for trips that started and ended in Waymo\u2019s operating domain.<\/p>\n

Of course, Uber and Waymo are also collaborating in Austin<\/a> and Atlanta<\/a>, where Waymo\u2019s robotaxis are available exclusively on Uber\u2019s app, as well as Phoenix<\/a>. It will be interesting to see how that relationship develops \u2014 or deteriorates \u2014 as the two companies come into direct competition with each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The companies have already begun on-road testing after the delivery of their first vehicle, a Lucid Gravity SUV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[6084,100,21351,101,103,102,104,106,105,1967,3986,5987],"class_list":["post-28564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-autonomous-cars","tag-news","tag-ride-sharing","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-transportation","tag-uber","tag-waymo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28564","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=28564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}