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Uber, Lucid and Nuro Pick Houston for Mid-2027 Robotaxi Launch

The announcement signals a staged commercial rollout that depends on production‑validation vehicles, depot construction and final regulator sign‑offs.

Overview

  • The partners announced Wednesday that Houston will be the second U.S. market after the San Francisco Bay Area, with paid service targeted for mid-2027.
  • Uber has secured a 50,000-square-foot Houston depot with more than four megawatts of power, about 40 fast chargers and 15 service bays to handle charging, maintenance and fleet operations.
  • Nuro is conducting supervised on-road testing in Houston and the three companies run an engineering fleet of nearly 100 Lucid Gravity vehicles across California and Texas for mapping and data collection.
  • Lucid will build production‑validation robotaxis at its Arizona factory that will carry Nuro Driver Level‑4 autonomy and a redundant sensor suite including lidar, radar and cameras for safety testing and homologation.
  • If regulators and validation steps proceed on schedule the partners plan to scale toward at least 35,000 robotaxis across dozens of markets, a shift that could reduce driver pay costs, change how people travel in cities and intensify competition with incumbents such as Waymo.