Lucid announced it is expanding its robotaxi partnership with Uber, increasing the number of Lucid Gravity SUVs Uber will purchase for its robotaxi fleet from 20,000 to 35,000. The company also announced additional funding—$200 million from Uber on top of $300 million already delivered, and named a new CEO, Silvio Napoli, a Swiss-Italian executive with more than three decades of experience in elevator, escalator, and moving walkway manufacturing.
Fleet expansion within multi-year robotaxi deployment plan
Lucid said Uber is increasing its purchase commitment for robotaxi vehicles to 35,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs, up from 20,000. This expansion is part of a broader deal involving Lucid, Uber, and autonomous delivery startup Nuro, announced last year, which calls for the deployment of thousands of autonomous vehicles in the US over the next six years.
The fleet will be owned by Uber or a third-party fleet management partner, with the first service launching in San Francisco. Uber and Nuro recently launched a beta version of the service for Uber employees only in the Bay Area. The vehicles currently feature safety drivers behind the wheel.
The increased vehicle count allows for more operational data collection and more real-world autonomy runs. However, the presence of safety drivers indicates the beta and early deployments remain in a supervised phase, with human oversight as part of the operational design.
Funding and autonomy development
Lucid’s robotaxi expansion is paired with additional investment. Uber is adding $200 million to the $300 million it previously delivered. Uber has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Nuro, which is developing the self-driving systems for the robotaxes.
Lucid is also receiving $500 million from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which already holds a controlling stake in the company. The structure reflects how robotaxi programs typically require coordinated capital flows across hardware, autonomy, and deployment.
The arrangement divides responsibilities: Lucid supplies the vehicles, Nuro develops the self-driving systems, and Uber manages fleet deployment and customer-facing service. This division requires alignment across vehicle availability, autonomy readiness, and safety procedures for deployments in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
New CEO appointment
Lucid appointed Silvio Napoli as its new CEO. Napoli is a Swiss-Italian executive who spent more than three decades running one of the world’s largest elevator and escalator companies. He is currently based in Switzerland but plans to relocate to the US.
This appointment concludes a 14-month search for a permanent replacement to Peter Rawlinson, who stepped down in February of last year. During the search, Chief Operating Officer Marc Winterhoff served in the role. Rawlinson previously served as chief engineer of the Tesla Model S before helping found Lucid.
The timing of the leadership change—alongside fleet expansion and funding—suggests Lucid is positioning itself for scaling and operations as robotaxi commercialization moves from beta into larger deployments. The appointment may influence manufacturing throughput, fleet readiness schedules, and the operational handoff between vehicle production and autonomy validation.
Robotaxi commercialization timeline
The robotaxi effort is structured as a multi-year US deployment plan extending six years, with an initial service launch in San Francisco and a Bay Area beta for Uber employees. The fleet will be owned by Uber or a third-party fleet management partner, which affects how vehicles are maintained, insured, and routed.
The increased purchase commitment—from 20,000 to 35,000 vehicles—could indicate the program is progressing toward larger deployments. However, the continued presence of safety drivers behind the wheel indicates the system is not yet fully autonomous. This gap between autonomy capability and deployment autonomy level is where safety engineering, regulatory coordination, and system design details become critical.
The described plan—thousands of vehicles over six years, expanding fleet commitments, and a staged rollout—reflects an iterative approach to robotaxi commercialization: build, deploy with oversight, learn from operations, and expand. As the program scales, operational execution may become as important as technical performance.
Source: The Verge