- Rivian and Uber have announced a new partnership.
- Deal will see the companies build up to 50,000 R2 robotaxis.
- Up to $1.25 billion is on the line and they’ll arrive in 2028.
Partnerships have been a huge part of Rivian’s business and the firm is widely known for building vans for Amazon. The company also had an ill-fated tie-up with Ford as well as an ongoing relationship with Volkswagen.
Fast forward to today and Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031. The investment and partnership is designed to “help accelerate both companies’ autonomous vehicle plans.”
More: Uber And Lucid Robotaxi Arrives Later This Year
The initial investment will be $300 million and the companies will create a fully autonomous robotaxi based on the new R2. 10,000 vehicles are expected to be deployed in the first phase and they’re slated to hit the streets of Miami and San Francisco starting in 2028.
If everything goes according to plan, robotaxi use will expand to 25 cities by the end of 2031. They won’t be limited to the United States as the companies mentioned cities in Canada and Europe, but didn’t give any names.
To help scale for the new cities, Uber has the option to negotiate the purchase of up to 40,000 more autonomous R2s beginning in 2030. All told, the company and its partners could purchase up to 50,000 Rivian robotaxis which would be available exclusively on Uber.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said, “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.”
Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe remarked, “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 robotaxis will apparently use Rivian’s third-generation autonomy platform, which will launch in the R2 late this year. It uses a “multi-modal sensor suite” that includes 11 65 megapixel cameras, five radar sensors, and 1 LiDAR sensor. They’re joined by two RAP1 chips, which were developed in-house and are capable of 1600 TOPS of AI compute performance.
