Overview
- On Wednesday, August 19, Uber integrated autonomous rides into its app in Zagreb so riders can request robotaxis through UberX and Comfort when vehicles are available.
- Pony.ai supplies the Gen‑7 Level‑4 driving technology while Verne owns and operates the fleet and handles day‑to‑day local operations.
- Licensed safety operators will remain in vehicles to monitor trips during the early phase with the partners saying they will seek regulatory approval and operational evidence needed to remove operators later.
- Uber said the app will show vehicle details and trip instructions to riders and the launch coincided with an about 4.7% rise in Uber’s stock price.
- The partners described the launch as a replicable shared‑deployment model that will gather driving data, improve unit economics, and position them to scale robotaxi services across other European cities and into the Middle East while competing with firms such as Waymo and Baidu Apollo.