Rivian and Uber are making major moves in the robotaxis space. In March, the two companies announced an agreement worth up to $1.25 billion that could deploy up to 50,000 autonomous vehicles by 2031.
To start, the rollout calls for a $300 million investment and an initial fleet of 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis. The R2 vehicles will hit the streets of San Francisco and Miami first. From there, the plan is to expand to 25 total cities in the U.S., Canada, and Europe by 2031.
Uber and its fleet partners have the option to purchase an additional 40,000 R2 vehicles starting in 2030 and add up to $925 million in capital if the partnership hits certain milestones.
"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," Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said.
For Uber, this is another move to embrace the competitive autonomous driving space. The company already has a similar robotaxi rollout with Lucid.
"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." Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained.
Their moves pit them up against Waymo, which was grilled by lawmakers in February about remote workers aiding supposedly autonomous vehicles. Tesla has its own designs on dominating the space, but it has had its own problems in introducing autonomous vehicles in Austin.
Should the Rivian robotaxi launch succeed, it could be a great way to get more electric vehicles on the road, which has been shown to reduce dangerous transportation-related pollutants.
While this agreement is for ride-hailing, drivers can still benefit from the significant advantages of leasing or owning an EV. Compared to gas-guzzling cars, they offer reduced maintenance and fuel costs, and you can maximize those fuel savings by getting set up to charge at home.
Charging an electric vehicle at home is much cheaper than using public chargers, saving hundreds of dollars each year. Qmerit is assisting homeowners interested in installing Level 2 EV chargers by offering free, instant installation estimates.
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