Uber wants to be the Swiss Army Knife of robotaxis

Uber has a way for autonomous car manufacturers: we’ve got this.

The ride-hailing and food delivery company has launched a new division called Uber Autonomous Solutions that is designed to handle all tasks related to driving robots, self-driving cars, or the road delivery robot business, including software and support services.

The project, which was announced on Monday, establishes what Uber has been quietly working on for several years now.

Uber has partnered with nearly a dozen autonomous vehicle technology companies for everything from robots and self-driving cars to robots and drones. Uber has helped many of these companies – Lucid and Enlightenment, Confirmationand China WeRide – invested $100 million to build a fast-paced, self-driving car wash, and launched it again Uber AV Labsa special technical team that will collect data for robotaxi partners.

Uber has partnered with investors; now it wants to make itself relevant.

“AV technology teams need to focus on what they do best: creating applications that can power the autonomous world,” said Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of driving and delivery, who will lead the project. The idea, he said, is to add “any depth of service that they need,” including expanding requirements, passenger experience, customer support, or managing day-to-day operations.

The ultimate goal is to help these companies reduce their cost per kilometer and increase speed to market. Uber said it wants to help these agents to deploy robotaxis more than 15 cities by the end of this year.

“What will determine the success or failure of autonomous driving in the world is whether it can be sold, and Uber will be the product that makes autonomous driving profitable,” Uber President and COO Andrew MacDonald said.

For Uber that means managing infrastructure such as data and mapping studies, fleet financing, management services, and managing how robotaxis and other AVs navigate events and complex environments. The company said it is using a fleet of specially designed Lucid vehicles to collect data that can be shared with partners to train their AI systems.

The new division is also planning to handle user experience, including customer support. In particular, Uber wants to take over fleet management, which could include remote assistance – an issue that has recently received attention from federal lawmakers on the issue. Waymo uses foreign workers. Fleet management can also provide insurance and employ the people who may need to support these AVs once they are in the world.

Uber’s move is all-encompassing and opportunistic. The company sold its AV development unit known as Uber ATG in 2020, after two years of internal problems and pressure after one of its test vehicles killed a pedestrian. (Uber sold shares in a problems with Aurora.)

It has tried to expand its position through cooperation and investment. And there have been many. Uber and Waymo have a robotaxi sharing service in Atlanta and Austin. The company has also closed deals with Chinese companies Baidu, Momenta, and Pony.ai, side-bottle delivery companies Cartken, Starship, and Serve, as well as UK self-driving car startup Wayve, as well as robotaxi makers AVride and Motional, to name a few. It has plans to launch a robotaxi service with Volkswagen in Los Angeles by the end of 2026 – although it won’t be in operation until 2027.

That gives Uber some protection, but it doesn’t replace any lost revenue if the company destroys its ride-hailing and food delivery business, which today is run by human drivers. Uber hopes this new feature will.