Uber employees in San Francisco can now request rides in an autonomous Lucid Gravity SUV through the Uber app, marking the latest phase of testing for a robotaxi service the companies plan to open to the public later this year.
The vehicles, outfitted with a self-driving system developed by autonomous technology company Nuro, are operating in autonomous mode with a human safety operator behind the wheel as backup. Nuro confirmed the employee testing phase in a blog post on Monday. While the rollout is limited to select Uber staff for now, it represents meaningful progress since Uber announced a partnership with Lucid and a $300 million investment in the EV maker in July 2025, alongside a separate agreement to purchase at least 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs over the next six years. Uber also made an undisclosed multi-hundred-million dollar investment in Nuro.
The Lucid Gravity robotaxi is equipped with high-resolution cameras, solid-state lidar sensors, and radars that feed into Nuro’s autonomous vehicle system, which runs on Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor computer. Nuro has 100 of these modified Gravity SUVs in its engineering fleet, currently gathering real-world data and testing autonomous driving across multiple US cities and states. Closed-course testing was completed last year, with public road testing beginning shortly after.
According to Nuro, the employee rides are designed to evaluate how the autonomy system, the vehicle, and the rider experience work together in a live operating environment. The tests also allow the team to assess how well the vehicle handles passenger pickups and drop-offs, a notoriously complex operation for autonomous ride-hailing systems. Production of the modified Lucid Gravity vehicles is expected to begin in late 2026, with Uber planning to own and operate the premium robotaxi service, likely with the assistance of a third-party operator.
