Lucid Chief Executive Officer Silvio Napoli called autonomous mobility “a strategic priority” after hosting Bolt founder Markus Villig at the company’s headquarters this week, as prototypes of its Gravity robotaxi for Uber and Nuro came off the line in Arizona.
“It was a pleasure to host Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt, at Lucid HQ earlier this week,” Napoli wrote on LinkedIn on Thursday. “Autonomous mobility is a strategic priority for Lucid, and I am excited about what the future may hold.”
Napoli said the two discussed “the future of mobility, autonomous technology, and the opportunities ahead as our industries continue to evolve.”
Napoli, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Schindler Group, took over as Lucid’s Chief Executive Officer on the first day of June.
A day later, Chief Communications Officer Nick Twork posted photos from the company’s factory in Arizona.
“Pretty cool to see production prototypes for our Lucid Gravity robotaxi program with Uber and Nuro,” Twork wrote on X on Friday. “Pictured here after coming off the line, this one is awaiting its halo and a few other sensors.”
The Bolt visit
The meeting came a month after Lucid and Bolt announced a partnership on September 17 to develop and deploy autonomous vehicles across Europe.
Under that plan, Bolt aims to deploy at least 25,000 fully autonomous vehicles built on Lucid’s upcoming Midsize platform. The vehicles are expected to use NVIDIA’s Hyperion architecture.
The first consumer model on that platform, the Cosmos SUV, is due in 2027, with Lucid saying in August the launch would “most likely” come in the second half. The figure counts toward Bolt’s goal of 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035.
The arrangement is not a binding purchase deal. The Financial Times described it as a memorandum of understanding, and neither company gave financial terms or an ordering date.
Napoli told the newspaper the first vehicles could roll out “as early as 2028.”
Villig’s visit followed a busy week for Bolt. Earlier this week, Bolt said its Lucid robotaxis would start in Madrid in 2027, subject to regulatory approval, running NVIDIA’s Alpamayo software stack. Bolt told Reuters it expects “tens of vehicles” in the Spanish capital next year.
The first phase is data collection to develop and validate the software, and the cars will not initially carry passengers. Bolt’s release did not give a commercial start date.
Kay Stepper, President of Lucid Technologies and Chief Digital Officer, said then that Lucid’s architecture “provides an ideal foundation for integrating NVIDIA Alpamayo technology with Bolt’s mobility platform.”
Lucid is not exclusive to either partner. “There is no exclusivity,” Napoli told Bloomberg on September 17, referring to the Uber arrangement. Bolt, which says it operates in more than 850 cities, is not exclusive to Lucid either.
It also plans a robotaxi pilot in the Paris region with Stellantis from 2028, the company said on Thursday.
Robotaxi prototypes in Arizona
Twork’s photos show a black Gravity on the factory floor without the roof-mounted “halo,” the sensor and lighting module that sits atop the Uber robotaxi. A second image shows the interior, with a Nuro-branded display above the dashboard screen.
At CES in January, the three companies described a production-intent robotaxi with high-resolution cameras, solid-state LiDAR and radars integrated into the body and the halo. They said production would start “later this year,” pending final validation.
Lucid’s July 2025 agreement with Uber says production is “targeted to occur in late 2026,” according to a Form 8-K. Uber and its fleet partners committed to buy a minimum of 20,000 Gravity robotaxis over six years from the start of production, running the Nuro Driver software.
The photos fit the program’s recent milestones. Nuro said on October 8 that the program had entered production validation, which it described as “the transition from development-focused engineering vehicles to production-focused builds.”
Napoli said in June that Lucid was preparing to build the first production validation robotaxis at its AMP-1 factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, where Nuro’s hardware is integrated on the production line.
Twork did not say how many prototypes Lucid has built or when series production would begin.
The posts came days after Lucid said on X that another robotaxi shipment was headed to the Bay Area. “Built in Arizona. Bound for the Bay. Another robotaxi shipment on the move as our fleet expands,” the company wrote on Tuesday, without giving a vehicle count.
Lucid cited “a fleet of nearly 100 vehicles across the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston” in its second-quarter results in August. The companies have targeted a commercial launch in the Bay Area this year, with Houston planned for mid-2027, according to Nuro.
Regulatory approval for paid driverless rides is still pending. Nuro holds a California DMV permit for driverless testing of the Gravity in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, and a California Public Utilities Commission permit for a passenger pilot with safety drivers.
Neither allows paid rides, and Nuro has not announced a permit to carry paying passengers without a safety driver.
Nuro said on October 15 that the program “calls for a minimum of 35,000 vehicles globally across dozens of markets over the coming years.”
Two partners, two contracts
The Uber program is further along than Bolt’s on paper.
Uber has signed two vehicle production agreements, both filed with US regulators. The first covers the Gravity. The second, signed in April, covers at least 25,000 robotaxis on the Midsize platform, with production of that variant targeted for late 2028, according to Lucid’s April proxy statement. Offset provisions put Uber’s total commitment at “at least 35,000 units,” Lucid said in its second-quarter 10-Q. Uber has also invested $500 million in Lucid.
Bolt’s vehicles would come from the same Midsize platform. No filed contract covers the Bolt volume.
Napoli has made autonomy central to Lucid’s strategy since June. Lucid formed Lucid Technologies to bring its software, driver-assistance and autonomy work under one structure, and announced the Bolt partnership in September.
Lucid produced 2,954 vehicles and delivered 3,806 in the third quarter, selling down inventory. Its October 5 production release said demand for the Gravity “continued to regain momentum.”
It reports results on November 9 at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time, when investors will look for updates on the start of robotaxi production, any binding terms with Bolt, and further comments on the company’s financials.
