You can’t ride a Nuro robotaxi yet. As of October 19, 2026, Nuro, Uber and Lucid are testing their robotaxi with safety operators on board in the San Francisco Bay Area and Houston. The Bay Area is the first planned market, with launch targeted for later in 2026; Houston is second, with service expected in mid-2027. When rides start, they’ll be booked only through the Uber app.
Nuro itself no longer presents itself as a delivery-robot company. Its website now sells the Nuro Driver, its self-driving system, as software that carmakers and ride-hail companies can license.
What the Uber–Lucid–Nuro robotaxi is
The three companies announced the program on July 17, 2025. Each has a separate job:
- Lucid builds the car, a robotaxi version of its Gravity electric SUV.
- Nuro supplies the self-driving system and leads testing.
- Uber runs the service. Lucid says the vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber or its fleet partners and offered only on Uber.
The plan is 20,000 or more of these vehicles over six years, and Uber said it would invest several hundred million dollars in both Nuro and Lucid. Lucid didn’t give exact amounts.
The production-intent car was shown at CES on January 5, 2026. According to that release and Nuro’s robotaxi page:
- Seating: configurations for up to six passengers, with room for luggage.
- Sensors: cameras, solid-state lidar and radar around the body and in a low roof “halo” module.
- Computer: NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor.
- Finding your car: an LED display on the halo shows the rider’s initials.
- Inside: screens for climate, heated seats and music, buttons to contact support or ask the car to pull over, and a live view of what the car sees and plans to do.
Lucid said production would start at its Arizona factory later in 2026, pending final validation.
Where it’s being tested, and with which permits
Testing on public roads started in December 2025 in the Bay Area, with trained operators supervising in the car. By June 2026 Nuro said it was testing around the clock, still with safety operators, in both the Bay Area and Houston (Nuro, June 17, 2026).
In California, carrying the public in a robotaxi takes approvals from two agencies, and Nuro has collected them in stages:
- California DMV: a driverless testing permit, which lets cars be tested with no one in the driver’s seat.
- California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC): a drivered pilot permit, announced on May 8, 2026. It allows passenger rides in test vehicles with a safety driver aboard.
Neither is a permit for paid driverless rides. Before a fully driverless, paid service in California, Nuro and its partners need a DMV deployment permit and a CPUC driverless deployment permit, the same two Waymo and Zoox had to get. Nuro hasn’t announced either as of October 19, 2026.
When you might be able to ride
The companies have given two dates:
- San Francisco Bay Area: launch “later in 2026,” per the CES release. With ten weeks left in the year, no launch date or service area has been announced.
- Houston: service expected in mid-2027. Uber has secured a 50,000 sq ft depot there for the fleet.
Nuro has said dozens more markets will follow over the coming years, without naming them. On October 15, 2026, it hired Rajiv Bhatia as chief product officer, describing the role as driving commercial launches.
When service starts, the booking route is the Uber app. The partners haven’t said whether early riders will need to join a waitlist, whether a safety operator will still be on board at launch, or how fares will compare with UberX. Expect a supervised phase first: Waymo, Zoox and Tesla all started that way.
How Nuro got here
Nuro became known for small driverless delivery vehicles built to carry groceries rather than people. Its site now leads with licensing. Besides the Nuro Driver, it offers the Nuro Toolkit, a set of development tools, and says the system is vehicle-agnostic, meaning it can be fitted to different makers’ cars.
Nuro’s homepage claims more than five years of driverless operations and over 2 million autonomous miles with zero at-fault incidents. Those are Nuro’s own figures. They mostly come from its earlier delivery work, not from the Lucid robotaxi, which has been on public roads since December 2025.
The company is expanding outside the U.S. too. It announced a European base in Germany in May 2026, and its site lists Munich, Shenzhen and Tokyo as upcoming offices.
How it compares with robotaxis you can ride today
If you want a driverless ride now, the services running in the U.S. are Waymo, Zoox and Tesla Robotaxi. Our guides cover what Waymo costs and where it runs, how to ride a Zoox and Tesla Robotaxi’s six cities.
The Nuro program differs from all three in one way. Waymo and Zoox develop their own driving systems and run their own fleets, though Waymo also takes rides through Uber in some cities, and Tesla builds the car, the software and the app. Here the car, the driver software and the ride-hail network come from three separate companies, which makes the launch date depend on all of them at once.