Lucid’s shares were trading higher in Thursday’s pre-market session after the company announced a partnership with Bolt to develop and deploy autonomous mobility services across Europe, with the Estonian ride-hailing company aiming to put at least 25,000 fully autonomous Lucid vehicles on its platform.
The stock was at $4.24 at 8:13 a.m. Eastern, up 20 cents or 4.95% from Wednesday’s close of $4.04, after briefly rising above $4.30 on the announcement. Wednesday’s session had ended down 1.94%.
The vehicles would be built on Lucid’s upcoming Midsize platform and designed for SAE Level 4 autonomy, using NVIDIA Hyperion, a reference architecture that combines compute with a standardised sensor suite.
The companies said they would work together from the product-development stage.
“Shared autonomous mobility offers the perfect opportunity to extend our unique technology beyond consumer vehicles,” said Silvio Napoli, CEO of Lucid. “Bolt’s reach and operating expertise make it an ideal partner to scale autonomous mobility across Europe.”
What Bolt Will Do
Bolt Autonomous Driving Solutions, the company’s dedicated unit, leads the programme from product development through commercial operation.
It will define vehicle requirements and software, safety and rider-experience parameters, build the fleet infrastructure and city partnerships, and intends to own and operate the fleet itself.
“Autonomous driving in Europe requires data, software, vehicles, and operations to work as one system built for European roads and regulation,” said Markus Villig, Founder and CEO of Bolt. “Lucid brings a world-class platform, and together, we will co-design the vehicle and software based on our data and more than a decade of operating experience across more than 850 cities.”
The 25,000 target is described as a step toward Bolt’s ambition of 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035.
Bolt operates in more than 50 countries and more than 850 cities.
In March it announced a partnership with Nvidia at the chipmaker’s GTC conference to build the AI foundation for European autonomous vehicles, using Bolt’s fleet data with Nvidia’s Cosmos, Omniverse and Alpamayo models on the Drive Hyperion platform, and published a further account of the Hyperion arrangement on its own site on September 3.
Bolt had announced arrangements with Pony.ai and Stellantis in late 2025.
Lucid’s side is led by Lucid Technologies, which was recently established and which brings the company’s AI, driver assistance, autonomy and digital functions under one structure.
The release names no launch date, city or country.
The Uber Comparison
Bolt’s 25,000 is the same number as Uber’s commitment to Lucid’s Midsize platform, and the two are not the same kind of undertaking.
Uber and its designated fleet operators committed in April to purchase a minimum of 25,000 Lucid Midsize vehicles modified for autonomous use over six years from the start of production, under a Second Vehicle Production Agreement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That sat on a July 2025 agreement for a minimum of 20,000 Lucid Gravity vehicles, taking Uber’s aggregate minimum to 35,000.
Uber has invested $500 million in Lucid across two tranches, with Nuro supplying the autonomy software.
The Uber programme has an engineering fleet of nearly 100 Gravity vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston, a fleet operator in Hertz’s Oro Mobility, a California driverless testing permit held by Nuro since April, and a commercial launch that Napoli said on the August 4 call was targeted for late 2026.
Paid driverless rides still require a California DMV deployment permit and CPUC authorisation.
The Stock
Lucid closed at $4.04 on Wednesday, giving it a market capitalisation of $1.59 billion on 394.07 million shares outstanding. The pre-market move to $4.24 adds about $79 million.
The shares are down 61.8% this year and 80.3% over twelve months.
