Uber Plans 20,000 Robotaxis in Six-Year Rollout with Lucid and Nuro (cnbc.com) 16
Uber said Thursday it will partner with electric vehicle maker Lucid Group and autonomous driving startup Nuro to deploy robotaxis using Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with Nuro Driver technology on its ride-sharing network. The companies plan to launch the first vehicles in late 2026 in an unidentified major US city and deploy at least 20,000 robotaxis over six years.
Uber will make multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both partners, including $300 million for Lucid to upgrade its assembly line for integrating Nuro hardware into Gravity vehicles.
Uber will make multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both partners, including $300 million for Lucid to upgrade its assembly line for integrating Nuro hardware into Gravity vehicles.
Ouch! (Score:3, Insightful)
Blimey - so all those amazing Uber drivers out there have allowed Uber to make so much profit that they can splunge huge amounts of money to essentially rob them of their jobs.
That's just cold, man!
Re: (Score:2)
It's called business. Once the industrial revolution began, people are replacyed by machines at every opportunity.
Bye-bye gig workers (Score:2)
Another CEO rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of not having to even pay contractors.
But who's then responsible for the inevitable deaths?
Re: (Score:2)
Rotten premise aside. Is it not more important to you that the number of traffic deaths reduce, not that you can blame someone?
Liability is the dumbest of all the concerns. Who is liable when a human Uber gets in an accident today? Nobody. The drivers blame the car manufacturer. The car manufacturer blames the brake manufacturer. The brake manufacturers blame the driver's negligence in getting the brakes fixed or they claim they never expected the brakes to be mashed that way. You seem to believe that magic
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As for gig worker jobs .. with cheaper and easier travel/deliveries there'll be more jobs. People can go to restaurants, bars, entertainment, and shopping much easier. Therefore there will be jobs created in those areas.
Ba-dum-tish (fixed that for you).
Re: Bye-bye gig workers (Score:2)
Who is liable when a human Uber gets in an accident today? Nobody.
Hmm, I'm curious: are you just trolling, or do you really not know how liability works? Because it's usually not nobody. Actually it's **never** nobody. It's almost always the driver (or at least *a* driver, if multiple cars are involved). That's why insurance of some kind is mandatory to drive cars on the road: otherwise the driver might be liable for payouts they might not be able to afford. Sometimes it's a defect in the car, in which case, yes, the manufacturer is liable, but that usually requires a pre
Re: Bye-bye gig workers (Score:2)
"Hmm, I'm curious: are you just trolling, or do you really not know how liability works? Because it's usually not nobody. Actually it's **never** nobody."
Now explain no-fault accidents
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Re: (Score:2)
Another CEO rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of not having to even pay contractors.
I know hundreds of millions is still a lot, but it's not *that* much (Uber's net worth is around $189 BILLION, so anything less than a Billion is way less than 1%). Seems like they're just hedging their bets, making sure they have a vendor if/when needed, and avoiding the risks of doing it themselves. When everyone else is looking into it, or actively doing it, they need to at least appear to be staying competitive.
But who's then responsible for the inevitable deaths?
This plays right into why Uber may be funding someone else to manage the car and car smarts.
Oh really? (Score:3)
They were saying something similar ~6 years ago. They'll find the edge cases are a bitch and they won't be able to just fire all the drivers to "increase shareholder value" but mainly so the c-suite can get even bigger bonuses.
Re: Softbank warning (Score:2)
A SoftBank investment is like a death knell for your business model. It means your company has failed to deliver anything close to what it was trying to do and has run out of smart money.
Brilliant (Score:2)
So, tens of thousands of people with no job.
On top of which, there is no way to claim this is "ride sharing", and not "a taxi service", with all the buying medallions and following taxi rules.
While we're at it, back in my mid-twenties, when I drove for Yellow for a couple of years in Philly, we were told, on being hired, among other things that at night, to wait for a female passenger to enter her door before leaving, for her safety. Uber gonna do that?