- Rivian and Uber have announced a new partnership, which will see the duo deploy up to 50,000 Rivian R2-based robotaxis across not just North America, but Europe also.
- The partnership will begin with a rollout of 10,000 Rivian R2 robotaxis, within initial deployments beginning in San Francisco and Miami from 2028.
- The Rivian R2 is the latest and most affordable EV from the manufacturer, and will soon pack new autonomous technology which suits the vehicle for capabilities such as robotaxi service.
Rivian R2 gets new job as a robotaxi
Whilst San Francisco and Miami are set to be the first cities to see these Rivian R2 robotaxis on the streets in 2028, the partnership is set to expand to 25 cities by 2031. These will be located in both the US, Canada, and Europe. The agreement initially calls for an order of 10,000 autonomous Rivian R2s for the robotaxi programme, but this has the option for the purchase of another 40,000 units from 2030.
The Rivian R2, fully announced earlier this month, will launch with advanced driver assistance capabilities, but future iterations of the Rivian R2 are expected to achieve level 4 autonomy through the addition of next generation autonomy hardware – which will include the likes of a front-facing LiDAR sensor. This explains why it’ll still be a couple of years until will see the R2 deployed for robotaxi service.
The move is the latest in a long line of partnerships Uber has forged with automotive OEMs. Other recent examples include Uber’s separate agreements with both Lucid Motors and Nissan. The difference in Rivian’s case, however, is that the autonomous technology is being developed in house, rather than outsourced.
RJ Scaringe, Founder and CEO of Rivian, commented:
“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 multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years.”
Dara Khosrowshahi, 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 U.S. 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.”
