Stellantis, Uber & Wayve Create A Global Robotaxi Service

Stellantis, Uber and Wayve have entered into an MOU to collaborate on developing and deploying a self-driving Level 4 autonomous taxi that will serve urban areas globally. This MOU establishes the general terms under which the parties may enter into further agreements related to the development, licensing, manufacturing and purchasing of vehicles, bringing together an automaker, the world’s largest ridesharing platform and an emerging autonomous vehicle AI company.

The roles are well defined. Stellantis (which includes brands like Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat) will provide the vehicles, based on its L4-Ready Platform with integrated sensors and the necessary redundancy for autonomous operation without a safety driver. Concept art released with the announcement suggests a purpose-designed minivan, not a rebadged model. Wayve brings the smarts and Uber brings the customers; when these cars go into production, passengers will be able to summon them via the Uber app.

1Wayve's map-free approach is the real bet

This differs from other robotaxi projects because of Wayve’s approach to autonomy. Rather than building high-definition maps of cities, which can take a long time and lock other companies into particular regions, Wayve uses end-to-end deep learning to train on vast quantities of driving data and video, allowing its system to adapt to new roads like a human. This could make the difference between deploying in individual cities or entire countries. While there’s no word yet on when these vehicles will arrive, Uber and Wayve have already said they intend to offer robotaxis in London later this year, using modified Ford Mustang Mach-E electric cars, and are currently testing in Tokyo with Nissan.

2Why this matters for you

Robotaxis have been “just around the corner” for years, limited to a few mapped cities. By combining a mainstream carmaker, a ubiquitous app and a mapless AI system, they hope to change that. If successful, this could bring self-driving cars to regular cities much sooner, and competition should help keep costs down. It’s worth remembering that this is just an MOU, though, so there’s no launch date or pricing, and lots of regulations to overcome; an MOU can also fade away without notice. Consider this a very strong indicator of the direction things are going, not an immediate option for a self-driving taxi ride.