Autonomous vehicle startup Nuro announced on Monday that it has begun offering robotaxi test rides in Lucid Gravity SUVs to Uber employees through the ride-hailing platform.
The employee testing program began last week in the San Francisco Bay area and includes a safety driver. Eligible employees can request rides directly through the Uber app.
“Employee test rides add a new layer to the work,” Nuro said.
These rides let the teams “evaluate the experience more directly — from requesting a ride in the Uber app to pickup, the in-vehicle experience, and dropoff — while continuing to validate the system in real-world conditions.”
The company said the rides give it the opportunity to “continue validating the rider experience ahead of commercial launch.”
The AV-focused startup framed the milestone as a step toward connecting the autonomy stack, the vehicle platform, and the rider experience in a live operating environment.
Nuro’s engineering fleet for the program now comprises nearly 100 Gravity vehicles, the company disclosed last month.
Engineering Fleet
Lucid delivered its first engineering prototype to Nuro in September, marking an early step toward building the eventual fleet that will operate exclusively on Uber‘s app.
Nuro completed the installation of Level 4 systems on the first Lucid-based robotaxi less than two months after the partnership was announced.
Autonomous on-road testing has been underway in the Bay Area since December, led by Nuro and using engineering prototypes supervised by human operators.
During Lucid‘s debut Investor Day, interim CEO Marc Winterhoff revealed that all engineering test vehicles for the program have been delivered.
While Lucid and Nuro have publicly identified only the Bay Area as the site for current testing and the first commercial deployment, vehicles from the engineering fleet have also been spotted in Houston.
Nuro maintains a long-standing facility for its autonomous delivery operations in the Texas city.
As of Monday, neither company has confirmed whether testing has been formally expanded to Houston.
Production of the final robotaxi variant is pending completion of safety validation, with a commercial service start targeted for late 2026.
Nuro’s Testing Ground
Nuro operates a closed-course test facility in Las Vegas, opened in late 2021 and built specifically for developing and validating autonomous driving technologies.
The location is designed to replicate real-world traffic conditions, allowing Nuro to recreate complex edge cases — from pedestrians appearing suddenly at night to erratic cyclists, work zones, and traffic light failures — to validate its self-driving system, known as the Nuro Driver.
The first Lucid robotaxi prototype was already operating autonomously at the Las Vegas proving grounds in July last year, ahead of the program’s transition to public-road testing, which began in the Bay Area last December.
Uber-Lucid-Nuro Deal
Uber invested $300 million in Lucid last July as part of a deal that also included a commitment to purchase at least 20,000 Gravity SUVs over six years.
The ride-hailing company also invested in Nuro. While the specific figures remain unknown, Nuro later confirmed that Uber‘s stake was part of a $203 million funding round raised in August that also included Nvidia.
Lucid delivered its first engineering prototype to Nuro in September for testing, marking an early step toward building the eventual fleet that will operate exclusively on Uber’s app.
According to Lucid, the first robotaxi prototype was already operating autonomously at Nuro’s Las Vegas proving grounds as of mid-July.
The prototype was assembled at Lucid’s Arizona plant and later transported to Nuro’s headquarters in Newark, California, where engineers integrated the autonomous systems.
Nuro, which handles the installation and calibration of sensors and self-driving hardware, completed the installation of Level 4 systems on the first Lucid-based robotaxi less than two months after the partnership was announced.
Recall Exposure Unclear
The expanded testing milestone arrives as the Gravity programme works through the fallout of a sweeping safety recall on the model.
Lucid recently recalled all 4,476 Gravity SUVs produced before February 14 over improperly welded second-row lap belt anchors — a defect traced to seat supplier Camaco Automotive, which altered its manufacturing process without notifying Lucid.
The recall population covers the vast majority of Gravity units built since deliveries began in late 2024, as Lucid only resumed assembling vehicles with seats built to the original specification on February 14.
The disruption shut down Gravity deliveries for nearly a month and weighed heavily on the company’s first-quarter delivery figures.
It remains unclear whether the engineering vehicles supplied to Nuro fall within the affected population.
Neither Lucid nor Nuro has publicly addressed whether any robotaxi engineering units were inspected, retrofitted with the reinforcement bracket, or had their seats replaced under the recall remedy.
Lucid’s Autonomy Approach
Winterhoff has framed robotaxis as one of two strategic pillars for Lucid‘s autonomy ambitions — the other being personally owned vehicles.
For the latter, Lucid is working with Nvidia rather than Nuro.
The two tracks are separate and serve different markets.
Lucid‘s management said last month that the company’s robotaxi deal with Uber and Nuro is only the beginning of a major autonomous vehicle partnership.
Asked to quantify the economics, the company’s CFO Taoufiq Boussaid confirmed the structure of 20,000 vehicles over six years, with Lucid providing the vehicle and handling part of the integration.
Management immediately pushed back on the 20,000 as a limit, however.
“Obviously, 20,000 over six years is a drop of water for us,” Boussaid said.
“So I mean, we do believe that this is the first, it’s a start. So the first 20,000 units will be serving a very limited number of cities,” the CFO added. “There is a reasonable expectation to assume that this figure will grow in the future.”
Winterhoff reinforced the point, saying Lucid would not have entered the agreement if 20,000 units were the entirety of the opportunity.
“Quite honestly, we probably wouldn’t have done it if it would only be about 20,000,” he said. “We looked at the whole robotaxi market. Is it now finally becoming real? And I think there’s a growing consensus that we’re now at an inflection point where the technology is finally there.”
Uber‘s President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald shared last month that the ride-hailing company was finalizing an agreement to deploy Lucid‘s upcoming midsize platform as well.
Lucid‘s stock hit a new all-time low of $8.32 on Monday, extending a week-long string of successive lows.
The slide reflects mounting pressure from the Gravity recall, the absence of updates on the expanded Uber deal, and broader market losses tied to the Middle East conflict.
Adding to the pressure, the EV maker announced earlier on Monday a separate recall covering 3,627 Air sedans in the US — its second physical recall in a matter of weeks.
As of press time, Lucid shares were trading roughly 1% lower at $8.52.
