is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
Uber just announced a deal today with the company that runs one of the largest robotaxi fleets in China, as the ridehail giant nears its goal of becoming the world’s ultimate autonomous vehicle clearinghouse.
Uber and Baidu said they are teaming up to deploy robotaxis in countries outside the US and China, with an initial focus on Asia and the Middle East. Baidu is currently testing vehicles in Dubai and has also said it wants to eventually launch in Europe.
Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxi division operates approximately 1,000 vehicles globally, most of which operate in China. The company said it completed 1.4 million paid trips in its driverless vehicles in the first quarter of 2025, which is a 75 percent increase year over year.
Ever since abandoning its own efforts to develop autonomous vehicle technology, Uber has stepped up its effort to strike deals with a variety of companies, from robotaxi leaders like Waymo to delivery robot operators like Serve and Avride. The company has said it wants to use its reach and scale to help autonomous vehicles proliferate across the globe. And it doesn’t want to just work with a few AV operators — it wants to work with all of them.
Uber doesn’t want to just work with a few AV operators — it wants to work with all of them
“We want to work with all the software providers,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a Decoder interview in May, “make sure they’re safe and affordable, and bring them to market.”
The “making sure they’re safe and affordable” is really the most important part. If riders trust Uber — and for the most part, customers do seem to trust the company to send them a car when needed — then it stands to reason they’ll extend that trust to include autonomous vehicles, if and when Uber decides to send them a robotaxi. That’s what’s happening right now in Austin and Atlanta, where Uber’s partnership with Waymo serves as a preview of what’s the come: human-driven Uber vehicles operating alongside driverless Waymo ones, all within the same app.
In addition to Baidu, Uber has partnerships with Waymo, Motional, Avride, May Mobility, Momenta, Volvo, Volkswagen, Wayve, and WeRide for self-driving cars; Serve, Coco, Cartken, and Nuro for delivery robots; Aurora and Torc for freight; and Avomo and Moove Cars for fleet management.
Uber’s decision to play nicely with all these companies probably won’t come at the expense of future ruthlessness. Uber knows it will also need to eventually compete with robotaxis, especially in markets like San Francisco where Waymo is growing by leaps and bounds. Customers have to use Waymo’s own app in SF, and some reports suggest that Waymo has already captured nearly a third of the ride-hailing market in that city, which translates into lost revenue for Uber.
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