Overview
- The companies announced the partnership on Thursday to deploy at least 25,000 fully autonomous vehicles across major European cities.
- Bolt will own and operate the fleet and will set the vehicle, software, safety and rider-experience requirements as it builds charging, operating systems and city partnerships.
- The vehicles are planned to be built on Lucid’s forthcoming Midsize platform and to run Nvidia’s Hyperion compute and sensor stack to achieve SAE Level 4 driverless operation.
- Lucid said the cars would be manufactured at its new Saudi Arabia plant slated to start early 2027 and the firms said initial Bolt robotaxis could enter service as early as 2028 if approvals and final terms are secured.
- Key barriers to rapid rollout include Europe’s fragmented regulatory rules, unresolved production volumes and investment commitments, and the need for city-level permissions before scaling toward Bolt’s 100,000-vehicle target by 2035.