Uber Opens Lucid Gravity Robotaxi Rides to Employees in San Francisco as Nuro Scales Engineering Fleet Toward 100 Vehicles
Select Uber employees in San Francisco can now hail Nuro-equipped Lucid Gravity SUVs through the rideshare app, a critical deployment milestone ahead of a public robotaxi launch planned for later in 2026.
Overview
Uber has begun offering employee test rides in Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with Nuro’s Level 4 autonomous-driving system in San Francisco, marking the first time the three-way partnership’s jointly engineered robotaxi has carried passengers on the Uber rideshare platform. The move, announced on April 13, is the last gating milestone before the consortium opens the service to the public later this year — and the clearest sign yet that Nuro, once best known for its sidewalk-scale delivery pods, has become a serious ride-hailing contender.
What We Know
According to TechCrunch, a select group of Uber employees can now request a Lucid Gravity robotaxi through the Uber app in San Francisco. The vehicles operate in autonomous mode but still carry a human safety operator in the driver’s seat as a backup, and Nuro describes the employee program as a way to evaluate “how the autonomy stack, vehicle, and rider experience work together and function in a live operating environment.”
TechCrunch reports that Nuro’s engineering fleet now comprises 100 Lucid Gravity SUVs outfitted with its self-driving system, gathering real-world data across several U.S. cities and states. The vehicles run on Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor in-vehicle compute platform and combine high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar, and radar.
Electrek confirms that employees can book the Gravity robotaxis directly through the rideshare app to “refine the service as the program moves closer to launch,” and that the service will be operated and maintained by Uber and its third-party fleet partner, available exclusively on the Uber app. Electrek traces the collaboration back to July 2025, when Nuro, Uber, and Lucid Motors first unveiled the partnership; the San Francisco Bay Area was chosen as the initial deployment region in October 2025, and on-road testing began in January 2026.
The commercial rollout will begin in San Francisco this year, Electrek reports, with expansion to “dozens of global markets” planned over the following six years.
Context
The Nuro-Uber-Lucid tie-up is one of the most capital-intensive robotaxi partnerships outside Waymo’s orbit. As previously reported, Uber has committed to purchasing and deploying up to 35,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs — up from an initial 20,000 — and has now invested a total of $500 million in Lucid across two tranches, in addition to a separate multi-hundred-million-dollar investment in Nuro disclosed at the program’s debut.
Nuro itself has pivoted sharply over the past two years, moving from autonomous delivery pods toward licensing its “Driver” stack to passenger-vehicle partners. TechCrunch notes that Uber’s investment in Nuro accompanied the robotaxi announcement, giving the ride-hailing company an equity stake in the technology underpinning the fleet.
What We Don’t Know
Neither Uber nor Nuro has disclosed when the safety operator will be removed from the driver’s seat, the core transition that separates supervised testing from the fully driverless commercial service both companies have promised. TechCrunch notes that production of the modified Lucid Gravity vehicles is not expected to begin until late 2026, leaving the near-term public launch dependent on retrofitted engineering-fleet cars rather than purpose-built production units.
The companies have also not specified pricing, the geographic boundary of the initial commercial service area within San Francisco, or how rider access will be allocated between Uber’s standard app and any dedicated robotaxi tier. Neither TechCrunch nor Electrek’s reporting addresses the California Public Utilities Commission permitting status that would be required before Nuro could charge for driverless rides without a safety operator, leaving the regulatory path to the promised public launch the most significant open question.