American electric car manufacturer Rivian Automotive and ride-sharing service provider Uber Technologies have officially announced a partnership aimed at accelerating plans to introduce autonomous vehicles. Under the new agreement, Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian by 2031, with an initial investment of $300 million already planned immediately upon signing, subject to obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals.
Network expansion
The main goal of this large (and expensive) collaboration is the establishment of an extensive, fully autonomous fleet of Rivian R2 robotaxis, which will be available worldwide exclusively through the Uber platform. The plan envisages the introduction of 10,000 autonomous vehicles in the first phase, which would significantly transform the way transportation services are provided in urban areas.
The first commercial deployment of R2 robot taxis is planned for 2028, and initial operations will focus on San Francisco and Miami. After the initial phase, the partners plan an ambitious expansion that should include a total of 25 cities by 2031. The network will extend beyond the borders of the United States, including cities in Canada and Europe.
By the end of 2031, if all technical and operational prerequisites are met, thousands of Rivian driverless vehicles will be integrated into Uber’s network. In addition to the initial plan for 10,000 vehicles, the agreement also includes an option for a significant increase in the fleet. Uber and its partners have the option to negotiate the purchase of up to an additional 40,000 autonomous Rivian R2 vehicles starting in 2030.
Technological challenges
The success of the entire project directly depends on the achievement of strictly defined goals in the performance of autonomous driving. This ensures that investments and fleet expansion are taking place in line with advances in safety and reliability technology, which is key to gaining the trust of regulators and end users.
On the technical side, the collaboration rests on Rivian’s third-generation platform for autonomous driving, presented last December. It is expected that this system, when it is launched in the R2 model at the end of this year, will be one of the most powerful combinations of sensors and computing power in robotaxis in general.
The hardware package includes a multimodal system with 11 cameras with a resolution of 65 megapixels, five radars and one lidar, which enables detailed collection of data from the environment in real time. The system is powered by two of Rivian’s own RAP1 chips, which together achieve a computing performance of 1,600 TOPS (trillion operations per second) for running artificial intelligence models.