If you see the sensor-equipped Lucid Gravity SUV and self-driving system developed by Nuro driving around San Francisco, chances are it’s an Uber employee.
Select Uber employees can now request a ride in a Lucid robot taxi through the Uber app, the final phase of testing ahead of a planned public launch later this year. Nuro providing the update in a blog Published on Monday, TechCrunch was told that the cars operate autonomously, with a human safety operator behind the wheel as a backup.
Although this is far from being publicly available, companies have a partnership and multi-million dollar investment In July 2025. Uber invested $300 million in Lucid and also agreed to buy “at least” 20,000 of the EV maker’s new Gravity SUV over the next six years.
Those EVs are equipped with Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system powered by Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. Lucid Gravity was a robot was discovered in Januaryequipped with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that help the autonomous system understand and operate in the real-world environment.
Uber has also invested an undisclosed amount of “many hundreds of millions of dollars” in Nuro.
The plan is for Uber to own and operate a premium robotaxi service — possibly with the help of a third party. Production of these modified Lucid Gravity cars is expected to begin in late 2026. according to the regulatory document published last year.
Nuro completed indoor course testing and began the first public road tests of autonomous Lucid Gravity SUVs late last year. Nuro now has 100 Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with its self-driving system in its engineering fleet, used to collect real-world data and test autonomous driving in multiple US cities and states.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
According to Nuro, employee test drives help the team evaluate how the autonomy stack, vehicle and driver experience work together and perform in a live operational environment. It also allows the team to test how well the car handles driver pickups and drop-offs, a very difficult operation in autonomous driving.
