Since last year, Uber has been offering drivers in a handful of locations - California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York City - $4,000 to swap their gas guzzlers for electric vehicles. The company must have liked the results because today it announced that it would be expanding eligibility for its "Go Electric" grant to drivers nationwide for the first time.

The timing, of course, is everything. Gas prices have been rising at a steady clip since the US and Israel launched their attack on Iran last month. Uber drivers are particularly exposed to rising gas prices, as increased fuel costs directly reduce their take-home pay. But with no …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber is joining forces with two companies, China's Pony AI and Croatia's Verne, to launch what it claims will be Europe's first commercially available robotaxi service. The vehicles are already being tested in Zagreb, Croatia, where Verne is headquartered, and will soon be available to customers on Uber's ridehail network.

The announcement is the latest move by Uber to shield itself from the financial blowback of robotaxis potentially overtaking the traditional ridehail business. The company has allied itself with dozens of autonomous vehicle developers over the past year in an attempt to persuade investors that it can survive the impendin …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber and Rivian are joining forces to deploy 50,000 fully autonomous robotaxis over the next several decades, the companies announced Thursday. As part of the deal, Uber will invest $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, contingent on Rivian meeting certain autonomy milestones, starting with an initial $300 million at signing. (The deal is still subject to regulatory approval.)

The news signals a big vote of confidence in Rivian's nascent autonomy efforts, which include designing its own custom AI chips to power Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Uber, meanwhile, has been on something of a robotaxi partnering spree, corralling a variety of compani …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber is moving aggressively into robotaxis, striking deals with new partners and promising big investments to support future fleets - basically everything it can do except design and build the vehicles itself. (It tried that once, unsuccessfully.) Now, the ridehail giant is launching a new initiative to support its third-party robotaxi partners called Uber Autonomous Solutions.

Basically, Uber is taking many of the things it does for its drivers and couriers - vehicle financing, fleet management tools, regulatory assistance - and making them available for its third-party AV partners, companies like Wayve, WeRide, Nuro, Waabi, and others. I …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber announced a new AI feature called "Cart Assistant" for grocery shopping in its Uber Eats app.

The new feature works a couple different ways. You can use text prompts, as you would with any other AI chatbot, to ask it to build a grocery list for you. Or you can upload a picture of your shopping list and ask it to populate your cart with all your favorite items, based on your order history. You can be as generic as you - "milk, eggs, cereal" - and the bot will make a list with all your preferred brands.

And that's just to start out. Uber says in the coming months, Cart Assistant will add more features, including "full recipe inspiratio …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Waabi, the Toronto-based autonomous trucking startup, is expanding its portfolio to include robotaxis. And it's bringing Uber along for the ride.

Raquel Urtasun, the former chief scientist at Uber's now defunct Advanced Technologies Group, founded Waabi in 2021 to be a more "AI-centric approach" to autonomous vehicles. That approach initially focused on trucking, with Waabi using its proprietary software to automate driving on commercial delivery routes in Texas. But with self-driving trucks turning out to be a way harder problem than originally thought, and robotaxis seemingly having their own moment, Waabi is now turning its focus to auto …

Read the full story at The Verge.

On Monday, nearly two dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, filed an amended complaint in the FTC's lawsuit against Uber. According to the lawsuit, Uber charged consumers for the Uber One subscription without their consent, billed them before the end of a free trial, and shared misleading claims about how much consumers can save with the subscription. Uber One subscribers were allegedly forced to go through a lengthy and difficult process to cancel the subscription, which could mean tapping through up to 23 screens and taking 32 actions.

The states joining the lawsuit today are Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Mar …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Uber and WeRide are now deploying fully driverless vehicles as part of its robotaxi service in the United Arab Emarites. Customers in Abu Dhabi who request an UberX or Uber Comfort may be matched with a fully autonomous WeRide vehicle if the route is part of the company's service area.

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle operator WeRide first launched their robotaxi service with safety drivers back in December 2024. At the time, the companies they anticipated pulling safety drivers out of the vehicles the following year.

Initially, the fully autonomous vehicles will only be available in select locations throughout the 12 square miles of …

Read the full story at The Verge.