Uber Is Back In The Robot Business Just In Time For CES

It’s been two years since Uber called it quits trying to make its own driverless cars, but the ride-hauling giant is now speeding to market with a distributed fleet of delivery robots and autonomous vehicles thanks to a recent flurry of partnerships.

Those attending the world’s largest technology show, CES, might have a chance to ride in an all-electric self-driving Uber from Motional, a Hyundai-backed startup based out of Boston. The companies just announced a 10-year agreement to bring millions of autonomous rides across the Uber network. Following deployment in Las Vegas, a broader rollout is being planned for Los Angeles. Motional’s Hyundai IONIQ 5 robotaxis have been making Uber Eats deliveries in Santa Monica since May as part of a pilot.

In Miami, Uber Eats is rolling out sidewalk delivery robots with Cartken’s AI-powered carriers. The robotics company founded by ex-Google engineers currently operates across college campuses with food delivery services like GrubHub. The Uber Eats partnership will be its first beyond college campuses.

Other partners include Serve Robotics which has been making sidewalk deliveries for Uber Eats in West Hollywood. The Redwood City-startup was spun out of Uber last year stemming from its $2.65 billion acquisition of Postmates in 2020.

And Nuro which will have its first deployment on the Uber network in Mountain View, California and Houston, Texas. This stems from a 10-year agreement announced at Uber’s Go/Get conference in May. The company holds the honor of being the first to obtain an autonomous deployment permit from the California DMV.

Leading Uber’s global team on autonomous mobility & delivery is Noah Zych who has said the scope of these partnerships show the important role that shared autonomous vehicles will play in the future of transportation and in Uber’s mission to be the platform that helps users go anywhere and get anything.

But Lyft is also pursuing these partnerships and the road ahead is not without its challenges.

One of the biggest players in the space is GM-subsidiary Cruise Automation which has been offering driverless rides in San Francisco since last year. The company has about 100 autonomous vehicles operating without a safety driver and is seeking to scale to 5,000. But the city is taking a closer look at its plans as concern have been raised that such an expansion could overwhelm city streets, according to a letter by the SFMTA.

Additionally, there has been the odd instance where an empty robotaxi has been stopped for a traffic violation and police have been baffled how to interact with it. Cruise has said it has addressed this issue by providing training to police departments and a dedicated phone number to call in those situations.

The market is also still nascent and operating in an environment of economic uncertainty and rising costs.

Although there are exciting entrants like Zoox which was acquired by Amazon in 2020 for $1.2 billion and autonomous trucking company Aurora which went public last year after Uber spun it off. Ford and VW-backed Argo AI suddenly shutdown in October and Apple just abandoned ambitions of developing a fully autonomous Level 5 car, opting for Level 4 instead where human interaction is still required. It’s pushed its self-driving car launch to 2026.

To get a better sense of where the technology stands, CES is showcasing many of these self-driving cars at the show taking place Jan. 5 through 8 in Las Vegas, and is hosting the Indy Autonomous Challenge, a competition where nine fully autonomous cars race at speeds of more than 190 mph on Jan. 7, 1 to 3pm at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.