Lucid Lands $750 Million in Funding, Including $200 Million from Uber
Waymo opens public rides in Orlando and Miami, Terawatt preparing $1.5B raise for robotaxi charging depots, and Why Autonomous Fleets Will Struggle in Cities
This week’s edition is brought to you by Voltera, the infrastructure partner scaling autonomous fleet deployment.
Top Stories of the Week
Lucid Secures $750 Million in New Funding, Names New CEO (link, no paywall).
Under the new funding agreements, Lucid on Tuesday said Uber committed to an additional $200 million investment, raising its total investment to-date in the company to $500 million. The ride-hailing company will also purchase at least 35,000 additional vehicles from Lucid, designed exclusively for use as part of Uber’s future global robotaxi service.
Uber’s AV investments are really starting to add up, and while the company certainly has a lot of cash in the bank, this is now a sizable and somewhat concentrated bet. Lucid is far from a scaled manufacturer, and pairing that with a high-end vehicle strategy cuts against the broader industry trend toward lower-cost, mass-market AV platforms.
That raises real questions about how large the addressable market for premium robotaxi rides will ultimately be. If these vehicles sit at the high end of the network, the upside may be capped, capturing a smaller, more affluent slice of demand rather than the broader, price-sensitive mass market where most ride volume lives.
I liked the initial $300M investment as a strategic foothold, but this additional $200M feels more like doubling down on a narrower, higher-risk slice of the market, with limited upside.
Related: Uber commits $10bn to robotaxis in strategy shift (link).
Other Stuff
Waymo opens rides to everyone in Orlando and Miami (link). Riders in both cities can now hail robotaxi rides through the Waymo app, with select Miami riders also getting access to freeway rides when they express interest in the Waymo app. Here’s the launch timeline for both cities:
Miami timeline:
12/5/24: Waymo announced their expansion into Miami, ahead of a future launch. They also announced Moove as their fleet partner there (link).
11/18/25: Began fully autonomous testing in Miami ahead of launch (link).
1/22/26: Waymo began welcoming their first public riders in Miami (link).
4/15/26: Launched full public rides in Miami, including limited freeway rides.
Orlando timeline:
Wayve bags $60m from semiconductor giants to roll out self-driving tech (link).
The investment comes via an extension to the company’s Series D round, with new backing from AMD, Arm and Qualcomm Ventures. It builds on the $1.2 billion the UK-based firm raised earlier this year, which brought global automakers including Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis onto its capital table.
Waymo rolls out new vehicles in San Francisco (link, no paywall).
Waymo plans to start offering rides in them [Ojai] to the general public “soon,” Bonelli said, but declined to say exactly when.
Related: Waymo Ojai Spotted in Truckee Doing Snow Test Drives (link).
‘You actually can get more letters on your Waymo dome. See reply’ (link).
‘An interesting effort by Brad Lander to navigate the messy politics of tech and Waymo on the East Coast, big city left’ (link). Brad Lander is a former New York City Comptroller, and a Democrat running a primary campaign against Rep. Dan Goldman in New York’s 10th Congressional District.
Why Autonomous Fleets Will Struggle in Cities (link).
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BADAS 2.0: The world’s best incident prediction model, period (link).
Uber begins early test rides of Lucid Gravity robotaxis equipped with Nuro autonomy systems (link).
‘Apropos of my lottery slot for the 2028 Olympics in LA I just realized that is going to be a monster moment for Waymo. Great service all over the city for a global audience. Bet they go big’ (link). Mega events are a nightmare for Uber and Lyft drivers, with congestion, street closures, and unpredictable pickup zones already breaking the system. For Waymo, that challenge looks even harder. Pickup and dropoff coordination is one of the weakest parts of the AV experience today, and large-scale events like the Olympics only amplify that problem.
So while the Olympics could be a huge visibility moment, it may also expose some of the biggest operational gaps, especially around pickups, staging, and rider coordination at scale.
‘If Waymo gets its way, 2 million workers will be out of work’ (link). More Perfect Union tends to take a pro-worker stance, and I saw a lot of negative commentary about this video online. But after watching it, I thought the core points were fairly grounded. I don’t agree with everything, but the video raises a valid question about the impact of autonomous vehicles on human drivers and doesn’t shy away from the reality that many could lose their jobs.
Related: Lyft starts Nashville robotaxi hub for Waymo fleet (link).
Flexdrive is hiring more than 70 full-time technicians, operations managers, fleet coordinators and maintenance specialists, many of them Lyft drivers.
Lyft has always had a more ‘driver-friendly’ reputation, so it was interesting to see that many of the ~70 hires came from its existing driver base. That said, if we’re being real, autonomous vehicles are unlikely to create more jobs than they replace. The whole premise is removing the driver from the car, which inherently reduces labor demand even if new roles emerge around fleet operations and maintenance.
How Waymo and Waze are pitching in to help solve L.A.’s pothole problem (link, no paywall).
‘If you’ve ever been interested in learning about the future of AV and EV transportation - there’s an abundance of opportunities taking place right now’ (link).
Scoop: Terawatt preparing $1.5B raise for robotaxi charging depots (link - paywall).
What else we’re reading/listening to
Upstarts by Alex Konrad: Robots! Drones! How DoorDash Is Building In Autonomous Delivery (link).
Autonomy Insiders by Daniel Abreu Marques: Inside MOIA: Autonomous Turnkey Solution for Europe (link).
Andy Masley: What’s blocking Waymo in DC and how can we fix it? (link).
Analyzing Waymo’s City Distribution Using Rider-Only Miles (link). I initially framed this as “market share,” but that’s not quite accurate. “City distribution” is a better fit for what the data actually shows, how Waymo’s rider-only miles are spread across its active markets, rather than its share of total rides within those cities.
AVs/Humans behaving badly
‘Determined delivery robot in China doesn’t stop for construction’ (link).
‘My friend keeps telling me a story where he ordered a Waymo from the airport in Phoenix, with a stop along the way. He left his bag in the car while he popped into the store quickly. The car took off. Customer service couldn’t send it back.’ (link). I’ve never really understood why Waymo handles stops the way they do. If you add a stop, they effectively end the ride and swap out the car, instead of just waiting like a normal ride would. They should just let you make a stop and charge for waiting time, similar to how Uber or Lyft handle it.
Human driver in Waymo robotaxi hits pedestrian on Northeast Side, San Antonio police say (link, no paywall). Well this is a little embarrassing..
Two Waymo passengers injured in hit-and-run crash in S.F. (link, no paywall).
Days after launch, Waymo vehicles block traffic at multiple Nashville intersections (link).
AV/Humans behaving “goodly” :)
Serve Robotics: We took a recent viral moment and turned it into something you don’t see every day in out-of-home—real-time, real-world, self-aware creative (link). Check out the incident that led to the apology (link).
‘A couple of food delivery robots got an assist from some helpful humans who spotted them struggling to get over a curb in Turku, Finland’ (link).
Neat Jobs
Head of Infrastructure at Moove AV (link) via Ming Maa.
Vice President Operations (Autonomous Vehicles) at TaskUs (link) via Alex Castañeda.
Job Moves
Linda Gormly: Amazon -> Zoox (link).
Shailesh Pathak: Rivian -> Waymo (link).
Whitney Weisman: Uber -> Waymo (link).
Shout-outs
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Until next week :)
-Harry