USAUber and Rivian have agreed to put a large robotaxi fleet on the road using the electric R2 crossover. Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian by 2031, released against agreed milestones in the development of Rivian’s autonomous driving system rather than paid up front.
The first phase covers 10,000 vehicles, bought by Uber and its partners. Service is planned to start in 2028 in San Francisco and Miami, expanding to 25 cities across the US, Canada and Europe by the end of 2031. A further 40,000 cars could follow, which is where the 50,000 headline figure comes from.
The autonomous R2s will run only through Uber’s platform. Each one carries an L4 system with 11 cameras, five radars and a lidar, processed by two of Rivian’s own RAP1 chips for a combined 1,600 TOPS.
That hardware is not exclusive to the robotaxi. A consumer version of the system is due on the production R2 in North America late in 2026, which gives Rivian a fleet of customer cars gathering data on the same sensor set the driverless version depends on.
Neither company has said what happens to the investment if the milestones slip, and no city beyond the first two has been named.
