Lucid's robotaxi dream begins with a single SUV

A grand vision to reshape city streets with thousands of self-driving electric cars from Lucid just took its first small step. The company has officially handed over the keys to the very first Lucid Gravity SUV to its partner Nuro. This single vehicle is just the start of a massive project with ride-hailing giant Uber to bring 20,000 autonomous robotaxis to American roads over the next six years. The number might be impressive, but we've heard promises like this before.

The story of this first vehicle, an engineering prototype, began at Lucid's factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. After assembly, the Lucid Gravity didn't go to a showroom but was instead shipped to the automaker's headquarters in Newark, California. There, a team from Nuro, the autonomous driving technology company, got to work.

They carefully outfitted the SUV with a suite of sensors and all the specialized hardware it needs to see and navigate the world on its own. This hands-on installation was a one-time event; for future vehicles, Lucid plans to integrate Nuro's technology directly on its main assembly line to streamline the process.

With all the new hardware installed, the prototype has moved to its next stop: Nuro's facility in Santa Clara, where engineers will integrate the "Nuro Driver" software. This complex system will become the vehicle's mind, processing all the data from the sensors and making driving decisions.

This phase involves extensive testing and validation to ensure the systems work perfectly before the vehicle is even considered for public roads. Both companies want to have the first road-ready robotaxi available on the Uber network sometime next year.

The scale of this partnership is ambitious. The contract is for a minimum of 20,000 electric cars, and executives at Nuro have hinted that the final number could be "much, much more." For those who have followed the world of autonomous EVs, this kind of talk might sound familiar. A decade ago, the industry was buzzing with bold predictions of cities flooded with self-driving cars in just a few years. Sure, we have autonomous taxis here and there, but nothing that resembles flooded cities.

Putting the Lucid-Nuro-Uber deal into perspective shows just how big their goal is. Today, the most established player in the robotaxi space, Waymo, operates a fleet of less than 2,000 vehicles across a handful of cities. Tesla has only a few dozen vehicles in a very limited Robotaxi program in Austin, Texas, and those still operate with "human safety monitors" behind the wheel. The industry has learned that scaling up from a few test cars to a large commercial fleet is a slow and expensive process.

But credit where credit is due, the delivery of this first Lucid Gravity is a tangible milestone. It shows the partnership is moving from press releases to physical hardware, which investors will appreciate for sure. But now, the real work begins - Nuro's software engineers and testers will have to prove if this ambitious plan to deploy thousands of electric robotaxis can finally deliver on the long-held promise of self-driving taxis taking over our cities.

Via