Uber is targeting a fleet of 100,000 driverless vehicles — and is working with Nvidia to reach that goal.
Uber already offers driverless rides via partnerships, such as with Google’s Waymo in Austin and Atlanta, and reports this week revealed plans to expand its robotaxi coverage to San Francisco with Lucid SUVs controlled via Nuro’s systems — a move that puts the ride-hailing firm head-to-head with Waymo in its own home market.
In an announcement with Nvidia, Uber has said it’s working alongside tech partner Nvidia to scale up a driverless fleet to a whopping 100,000 cars — though it’s not said how long that will take, only that the expansion will begin in earnest in 2027. Market leader Waymo said in May that its fleet was made up of 1,500 vehicles, with another 2,000 on the way over the next year.
Working with Nvidia on driverless cars
Nvidia said the partnership with Uber aims to build the “world’s largest” Level-4 network of cars, using its own Nvidia Drive AGX development platform and Drive software.
“Together with Uber, we’re creating a framework for the entire industry to deploy autonomous fleets at scale, powered by Nvidia AI infrastructure. What was once science fiction is fast becoming an everyday reality,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia , in a statement.
Manufacturing the future of robotaxis
Uber won’t be manufacturing the cars, naturally — instead, the development platform will make it easier for Nvidia partners such as Stellantis, Lucid and Mercedes-Benz to roll out the technology in their own vehicles. Beyond the passenger cars, Nvidia said it was also working with Aurora, Volvo and Waabi on long-haul freight at the same level-4 technology.
“Nvidia is the backbone of the AI era, and is now fully harnessing that innovation to unleash L4 autonomy at enormous scale, while making it easier for Nvidia-empowered AVs to be deployed on Uber,” Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said in a statement.
Earlier this week, Khosrowshahi was quoted as saying that all cars will be autonomous within the next two decades, with a reduced level of car ownership — and driving becoming an old-fashioned skill on par with horseback riding.
Of course, driverless companies have been making unmet promises about the speed of the shift to driverless for twenty years now, and shifting all cars to any technology, let alone one still in development, will take a huge shift in manufacturing, customer acceptance, and more.
