Rivian said Thursday that it is partnering with Uber to build thousands of robotaxes based on its upcoming R2 SUV. The deal could be worth up to $1.25 billion for the EV maker.
Uber is kicking off the partnership with an initial $300 million investment in Rivian and is “expected to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robot taxis” ahead of a planned launch in San Francisco and Miami in 2028.
Uber will have an option to buy up to 40,000 more autonomous R2 SUVs from Rivian starting in 2030. The two companies said they plan to launch the robot taxis “in 25 cities in the United States, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031.” According to the companies, the fleet will be available exclusively on the Uber network.
While the deal is potentially lucrative for Rivian, it is fraught with risks and challenges.
Rivian has yet to start production of the R2 SUV; production is expected to begin by June, he said. Also, it has not tested and implemented a self-driving system designed for robotaxis. To raise the bar even further, the robot taxi is slated to be built at Rivia’s Georgia factory, which is still under construction.
These obstacles have not dampened Rivia’s determination or that of its founder and CEO RJ Scaringe, who has made automated driving technology a top priority for the company. He even hinted during the company’s first Autonomy & AI Day in December, this work allows the startup to “track opportunities in the raid-sharing space.”
Indeed, Scaringe was behind the company’s decision to scrap its previous rules-based framework for driver assistance in 2021 in favor of an AI-first strategy that uses large language models to teach the system how to perceive and navigate the world. This automated driving system is designed to learn from fleet data and become increasingly autonomous.
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The result, called the Rivian Autonomy Platform, debuted in 2024 on the automaker’s second-generation R1 vehicles. This is the basis of Rivian’s plan to increase capabilities, from silent driving on certain highways to point-to-point navigation, expected later this year, which aims to automate control during the entire drive.
Finally, Rivian wants to offer a hands-off system through a hardware upgrade, including a lidar sensor and an “autonomous computer” capable of processing 5 billion pixels per second. This improved hardware will go on sale in the R2 SUV version at the end of 2026.
As capable as these features are, they are still not considered fully autonomous driving systems, where the driver is never expected and is responsible for taking control.
However, the startup intends to eventually offer that level of automated driving. On the company’s autonomy day, it laid out plans for what it called “personal L4,” the Society of Automotive Engineers-defined level at which an autonomous vehicle can operate in a given area without human intervention.
Automated driving remains one of Rivian’s biggest focuses, Scaringe said on stage at SXSW 2026 last week. “Our way to turn a blind eye in 2027 is something we spend more money on than anything else,” Scaringe said.
And he believes in the speed of progress.
“If you look at the progress in autonomy in the last five years and try to use that as an approximate metric or measure to predict the next five years, you’re going to be very wrong. The pace of progress is very different from looking back five years. The past, in this case, is not a good predictor of the future.”
Rivian isn’t the first electric car startup that Uber has used to build a robot taxi. Last year, ride-hailing giant Lucid Motors said it would team up with autonomous vehicle technology company Nuro to develop a robot taxi based on Lucid’s Gravity SUV. Those robots It is expected to be commercially available in San Francisco by the end of this year.
Uber partners with more than 25 dedicated robot taxi or autonomous car companies around the world. Its most notable partnerships to date are with Waymo, which includes Alphabet’s Austin-based robotics company Uber in Atlanta. Uber also has contracts Moving, Baiduand a Major investor in UK startup Wayve.
