Uber and WeRide, a Chinese company, announced on Friday that they will be collaborating to provide autonomous car trips in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
TakeAway Points:
- WeRide, a Chinese manufacturer of autonomous vehicles, and Uber announced their partnership to provide a robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
- Initially, the rides will be supervised by human safety drivers.
- Before launching in Abu Dhabi, Uber was enabling tens of thousands of robotaxi rides monthly in the United States, a company representative said.
- Waymo announced that it will increase the size of its fleet in Miami next year and intend to offer paid rides to residents by 2026.
Uber to give robotaxi rides
To start, each WeRide robotaxi that’s hailed via the Uber app will come with a human driver present “to ensure a secure and reliable experience for riders and pedestrians,” Uber said in a press statement. They aim to offer a fully driverless commercial service later in 2025 in Abu Dhabi.
The robotaxis will begin operating between Saadiyat Island and Yas Island, as well as routes to and from Zayed International Airport.
Uber’s partner in the UAE, WeRide, is a Chinese autonomous vehicle developer. It’s listed on Nasdaq and also holds permits for driverless vehicle testing, or both testing and operations, in Dubai, UAE, China, Singapore, and the U.S., per its website.
Uber’s expansion
On a third-quarter earnings call in late October, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the ride-hailing and delivery platform has secured partnerships with more than a dozen different autonomous vehicle companies.
“Our autonomous strategy is working,” he said, adding, “AV partners are clearly understanding the significant value Uber can bring to their deployment plans.”
Uber was already facilitating tens of thousands of autonomous vehicle rides per month in the U.S. before its UAE expansion, a company spokesperson said.
In a note from Redburn Atlantic on Wednesday, analyst James Cordwell identified potential “structural risk from autonomous vehicles” for Uber’s core mobility business, with Alphabet-owned Waymo standing out as both a partner and potential competitive threat to Uber in the U.S. today.
“We believe autonomy will significantly expand the addressable market and Uber is well positioned to be the aggregator of autonomous vehicle providers,” Cordwell wrote. The firm has a buy rating on shares of Uber with a 2025 year-end price target of $90.
Waymo Plans Expansion To Miami
Waymo, a company owned by Alphabet, is aiming for the Sunshine State as its next destination.
The Alphabet-owned company announced Thursday that it will be hitting the roads in Miami. Waymo said it will first begin cruising through Florida with human safety drivers in 2025 before opening doors to riders for its robotaxi service through its Waymo One app in 2026.
The expansion into Miami is indicative of Waymo’s growing confidence in operating its self-driving vehicles in harsher weather conditions in large metropolitan areas in the U.S.
Waymo first tested in Miami in 2019, which the company said helped improve the ability of its self-driving vehicles to navigate in wet and rainy conditions.
“We deepened our learning and understanding of the Waymo Driver’s performance in adverse weather conditions,” a company spokesperson said.
Waymo will use what it learnt when it returns to the city with its all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs next year.
The company said its initial territory in Florida will include some parts of Miami’s larger metropolitan area, which has a population of more than 6 million people.
Waymo’s expansion growth
Waymo has been rapidly expanding its operations over the last year thanks to additional funding.
In November, the company announced it was removing its waitlist of about 300,000 people in Los Angeles, so anyone would be able to use Waymo One to hail a self-driving robotaxi throughout the nearly 80 square miles of Los Angeles County. The company’s ride-hailing service also operates citywide in Phoenix and San Francisco.
And in September, Waymo announced a partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta. Through that deal, Uber riders will be able to access Waymo’s robotaxis through the Uber app starting in early 2025, and Uber will be responsible for fleet management and operations of the Waymo vehicles, including maintenance and infrastructure, such as vehicle charging, cleaning, and repairs.
Waymo partners with Moove
Additionally, Waymo on Thursday announced that it will partner with mobility company Moove to manage its fleet operations, facilities, and charging infrastructure in both Miami and Phoenix. Moove will begin managing Waymo’s Phoenix fleet in early 2025, a Waymo spokesperson said.
Waymo closed a $5.6 billion funding round in October to expand its robotaxi service across the U.S. The autonomous vehicle venture’s parent company, Alphabet, which also owns Google, led the funding round alongside earlier backers, including Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity, Perry Creek, Silver Lake, Tiger Global and T. Rowe Price.
The robotaxi company said it now sees more than 150,000 paid rides per week via the Waymo One app across San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Waymo is the only autonomous vehicle developer that currently operates a commercial robotaxi service in several major metro areas across the U.S., but competitors are looming.
GM-owned Cruise is working on bringing its autonomous vehicles back into use on public roads after discontinuing its services following an accident where one of its self-driving cars injured a pedestrian in San Francisco.
Tesla, meanwhile, showed off design concepts for a self-driving Cybercab and Robovan at an event in October. However, Tesla still classifies the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving software in its vehicles as “partially automated driving systems,” which require a human to be ready to steer or brake at all times. In an October earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will launch a self-driving ride-hailing service in California and Texas as early as 2025.
SoftBank-funded Wayve is testing its autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, and Amazon-owned Zoox is also testing its self-driving cars, which do not feature steering wheels, in several U.S. cities.
