Uber’s new autonomous vehicle division is all about survival and opportunity

Uber has an offer for self-driving car makers: We get this.

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 running a robotaxi, self-driving truck or curbside delivery robot business, including software and support services.

The initiative, announced Monday, formalizes what Uber has been quietly working on for several years now.

Uber has amassed partnerships with nearly two dozen autonomous vehicle technology companies in every use case from robotaxis and trucking to curbside delivery robots and drones. Uber has backed many of these companies – Lucid and Nuru, GuaranteedAnd China We are riding – It invested $100 million to build fast charging stations for self-driving cars, and even launched it Uber AV LabsA specialized engineering team will collect data for robotics partners.

Uber has made partnerships and investments. Now she wants to make herself indispensable.

“Autonomous vehicle technology teams must be able to focus on what they do best: building software that can safely power an autonomous world,” said Sarfaraz Maredia, global head of autonomous mobility and delivery at Uber, who will lead the initiative. The idea, he said, is to add “operational depth where they need it,” including demand generation, passenger experience, customer support, or day-to-day fleet operations management.

The ultimate goal is to help these companies reduce their costs per mile and increase speed to market. Uber said it plans to help these partners expand the deployment of robotaxis More than 15 cities by the end of this year.

“What will determine the success or failure of autonomy in the world is whether it is commercially viable, and Uber will be the thing that makes autonomy commercially viable,” said Andrew McDonald, Uber’s president and COO.

For Uber, that means handling infrastructure like training and mapping data, fleet financing, regulatory services, and managing how robots and other self-driving vehicles navigate complex events and spaces. The company said it uses a fleet of specially equipped Lucid vehicles to collect data that can be shared with partners so they can train their AI systems.

The new division also plans to address user experience including customer support. Notably, Uber wants to take over fleet management, which would include remote assistance — an issue that has recently received attention from federal lawmakers over concerns Waymo employs workers abroad. Fleet management will also cover insurance and hiring humans who may need to support these self-driving vehicles when they are out in the world.

Uber’s move is both existential and opportunistic. The company sold its autonomous vehicle development unit known as Uber ATG in 2020, after two years of internal strife and pressure after one of its experimental vehicles killed a pedestrian. (Uber sold the division in A A complicated deal with Aurora.)

It has tried to strengthen its position through partnerships and investments. And there were many. Uber and Waymo have a joint robotaxi service in Atlanta and Austin. The company has also struck partnerships with Chinese companies Baidu, Momenta, and Pony.ai, curbside delivery robot companies Cartken, Starship, and Serve, and UK-based automated driving technology startup Wayve, as well as robotaxi developers AVride and Motional, to name a few. It plans to launch a robotaxi service with Volkswagen in Los Angeles by the end of 2026 – although it won’t be driverless until 2027.

These services provide Uber with some protection, but they do not provide an alternative to any lost revenue if these companies erode its own ride-hailing and food delivery businesses, which today are operated by human drivers. Uber hopes this new division will do just that.