Uber announces robotaxi launch in Munich

(Sharecast News) - Ride-hailing group Uber has announced it is launching a robotaxi programme in Munich, partnering with Israeli AI firm Autobrains to scale a fully autonomous fleet of taxis across the city.

The Germany metropolis, which will serve as the first deployment city for the robotaxi programme, provides the "right launch environment for commercially scalable autonomous mobility", given its dense city streets, high-speed road networks and regulatory framework, Uber announced.

The launch will combine Uber's platform with Autobrains' agentic autonomous driving intelligence and Nvidia's Drive Hyperion - the chip giant's L4-ready autonomous driving development platform and reference architecture.

Together, the technologies establish an OEM-agnostic model to expand a robotaxi fleet on a large scale, with Autobrains' agentic AI designed with flexibility to deploy across OEM platforms, Uber said.

"For automakers and autonomy developers, the challenge is not just building autonomous vehicles - it's bringing them into a commercial network where they can reliably serve riders at scale," said Sarfraz Maredia. Uber's global head of autonomous mobility and delivery.

"This programme creates a new path to do that by combining vehicle-agnostic autonomy, leading AI compute, and Uber's ride-hailing platform," Maredia said.

Uber Technologies was trading 3.9% higher at $73.17 by 1624 BST.