Uber has a pitch for autonomous vehicle makers: we got this.<\/p>\n\n
The ride-hailing and food delivery company has launched a new division called Uber Autonomous Solutions designed to take on all the tasks associated with operating a robotaxi, self-driving truck, or sidewalk delivery robot business, including software and support services.<\/p>\n\n
The initiative, announced Monday, formalizes what Uber has been not so quietly working on for several years now.<\/p>\n\n
Uber has amassed partnerships with nearly two dozen autonomous vehicle technology companies across every use case, from robotaxis and trucking to sidewalk delivery robots and drones. Uber has backed many of these companies \u2014 Lucid and Nuro<\/a>, Waabi<\/a>, and China’s WeRide<\/a> \u2014 invested $100 million to build fast-charging, autonomous-vehicle charging stations, and even launched Uber AV Labs<\/a>, a specialized engineering team that will gather data for robotaxi partners.<\/p>\n\n Uber has made the partnerships and investments; now it wants to make itself indispensable.<\/p>\n\n “AV tech teams should be able to focus on what they do best: building software that can safely power an autonomous world,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, who will be leading the initiative. The idea, he said, is to add “operational depth wherever they need it,” including demand generation, rider experience, customer support, or managing the day-to-day fleet operations.<\/p>\n\n The end goal is to help these companies reduce their costs per mile and increase the speed to market. Uber said it plans to help these partners scale robotaxi deployments to more than 15 cities by the end of this year<\/a>. <\/p>\n