You can ride a Motional robotaxi in Las Vegas through the Uber app. Since March 13, 2026, riders who request UberX, Uber Electric, Uber Comfort or Uber Comfort Electric may be matched with a Motional Hyundai Ioniq 5 at no extra cost. Every car still has a vehicle operator behind the steering wheel. Motional and Uber say fully driverless service is expected to begin by the end of 2026, and as of October 19, 2026, that switch hasn’t been announced.
Las Vegas is the only city where Motional currently carries the public.
How to get matched with a Motional car
The steps come from Uber’s launch announcement:
- In the Uber app, go to Settings and opt in to autonomous rides under Ride Preferences. Uber says this raises your chance of a match. It applies to residents and visitors alike.
- Request an UberX, Uber Electric, Uber Comfort or Uber Comfort Electric ride. A Motional car is a possible match, never a guaranteed one.
- If you’re matched, the app notifies you each time, and you can accept or switch to a ride with a human driver.
- When the car arrives, unlock it and start the trip in the Uber app. Audio cues inside remind you to close the doors and fasten your seat belt.
Help is available from a human support agent through the Uber app during the trip. The fare is the normal fare for the product you requested, so check the price in the app before you confirm.
Where it picks up
The service started at designated pickup and drop-off points along Las Vegas Boulevard and nearby areas, as Automotive World reported at launch, and the companies said the area would expand. Hotel entrances on the Strip are busy, tightly managed spaces, so whether your exact hotel is a stop depends on the current map in the Uber app. If your trip starts or ends outside the covered points, you’ll get a regular driver.
Why there’s still someone behind the wheel
Uber’s announcement says the operator monitors the road from the driver’s seat for now, and that a service with no human in the vehicle is expected by the end of the year. Motional’s blog post on commercializing driverless ride-hail in Las Vegas, dated February 2, 2026, says driverless testing has begun in the city. Testing without an operator and selling rides without one are separate steps, and the companies have tied the second to the end of 2026.
The car itself is the Ioniq 5 robotaxi that Motional developed with Hyundai Motor Group. Automotive World notes it’s built for SAE Level 4 driving and certified under US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. If you’re unclear on what Level 4 means, our Drive Pilot guide explains the Level 3 tier just below it.
How Motional got here
Motional began as a $4 billion joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv. In 2024 it cut staff and paused commercial operations. Aptiv later stepped back as a backer, and Hyundai put in roughly another $1 billion, TechCrunch reported in January 2026. The company rebuilt its driving software around large AI models and reset its target: commercial driverless service in Las Vegas by the end of 2026.
Before the restructuring, Motional ran rides in Las Vegas through Uber and Lyft and deliveries in Los Angeles through Uber Eats, all with safety operators, logging more than 130,000 autonomous rides, according to The Next Web.
Its most recent announcements on its newsroom are research releases. On September 8, 2026, it open-sourced nuReasoning, a dataset of rare driving scenarios meant to train models to reason through unusual situations.
Other robotaxis in Las Vegas and beyond
Zoox also runs in Las Vegas, with its own app and a purpose-built vehicle. See how to ride a Zoox robotaxi. For fully driverless rides in other cities, see our Waymo fares and cities guide. Avride runs a similar Uber setup with an onboard specialist in Dallas, covered in our Avride guide.