Uber will bring its premium robotaxi service to Houston in 2027

Uber plans to launch a premium robotaxi service in Houston by mid-2027, making it the second U.S. market under its partnership with EV maker Lucid and autonomous vehicle startup Nuro. The announcement follows a flurry of activity in the San Francisco Bay Area, as the trio of companies prepare to offer a robotaxi service there later this year. Uber says it will eventually take the robotaxi program to “dozens of cities” in the coming years. For now, the focus is on San Francisco and then Houston — both markets where Uber will go head-to-head with rival Waymo, the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company that currently operates commercial robotaxi services in both cities. Nuro has spent months testing Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with its self-driving system in San Francisco and has made progress on that front, including giving Uber employees the ability to hail the Lucid robotaxis. But these vehicles still aren’t driverless, despite Nuro receiving a permit last month from the California Department of Motor Vehicles that would allow it to remove the safety driver from the vehicle. Uber and Nuro’s combined engineering fleet of 100 autonomous vehicles is testing on public roads with safety operators behind the wheel in Houston as well. Nuro is also using closed courses and simulation to validate the self-driving system before opening the robotaxis to the public. …