Uber is doubling down on the intensifying race to commercialize self-driving vehicles, pledging to invest more than $10 billion to expand its global robotaxi network.
The ride-hailing company said on Wednesday that the spending would primarily consist of equity investments in autonomous-driving partners, along with balance-sheet support for fleet operations and vehicle commitments.
Uber plans to deploy 120,000 autonomous vehicles over the coming years as it seeks to become what CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described as the “long-term winner” in the autonomous-vehicle market.
“Our ambition is clear: to become the world’s leading commercialization platform for autonomous mobility,” he said in a statement.
According to Khosrowshahi, Uber is currently live with autonomous vehicle and robotaxi partnerships in seven cities. It now plans to operate robotaxi services in at least 15 cities by the end of the year.
Earlier on Wednesday, Uber announced that its British autonomous-driving partner, Wayve, had received permission from Transport for London to launch a commercial robotaxi service with a supervising driver behind the wheel.
The investment announcement came as Uber reported strong second-quarter results. Revenue rose 12 percent from $12.65 billion a year earlier, while net income climbed to $2.39 billion from $1.35 billion.
Uber’s core mobility business generated $7.36 billion in second-quarter revenue, while its delivery segment brought in $5.25 billion.
The demand was strong across regions and services during the quarter, including travel associated with the FIFA World Cup. According to Khosrowshahi, more than 8 million tourists used Uber in host cities across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
For the third quarter, Uber expects gross bookings of about $59.25 billion at the midpoint of its guidance range.
Uber is competing with Alphabet-owned Waymo, Elon Musk’s Tesla, and other autonomous-driving services as they seek to establish robotaxi services in major markets.
Uber and Waymo ended their partnership in Phoenix earlier this year, but Khosrowshahi said the two companies remain committed to working together in Atlanta and Austin.
“We believe we’ll continue to operate next year in those marketplaces,” he said in Tuesday’s earning call. “It’s a terrific product, and the on-the-ground partnership continues to be very strong.”
At the same time, Khosrowshahi said Uber does not want to depend too heavily on a single autonomous vehicle developer.
“We want to make sure that we’re not dependent on one partner,” he said during the call. “We’re absolutely seeing a plethora of newer players in the AV ecosystem, just like you see in the foundation model space.”
