A year after launching a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi, Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide and partner Uber can finally call that service driverless.
The companies said the commercial robotaxi service, which will no longer have a human safety operator behind the wheel, is open to the public and will start with routes on Yas Island, a tourist district that is home to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Formula 1 racing circuit.
Robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi will work similarly to Uber’s partnership with Waymo in Austin.
Uber riders that select Uber Comfort or UberX in Abu Dhabi may be matched with a WeRide robotaxi. Riders who want to increase their chances of being matched with a fully autonomous vehicle can select the “Autonomous” option in the Uber app. Uber and WeRide are also working with fleet operator partner Tawasul.
The launch comes a month after WeRide secured a federal permit from the United Arab Emirates to conduct fully driverless robotaxi commercial operations. WeRide and Uber plan to extend driverless services to cover additional areas in Abu Dhabi’s city center.
“Today’s fully autonomous launch in Abu Dhabi represents a historic transportation milestone, as the first driverless AV deployment outside of the U.S. or China,” Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s head of autonomous mobility and delivery, said in a statement.
Uber has spent the past two years locking up partnerships with 20 autonomous vehicle technology companies in various countries, including the United States, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Those partnerships have expanded beyond the realm of robotaxis as well. Uber’s deals span the full range of self-driving applications, including delivery and trucking. This year alone, it announced partnerships with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based May Mobility and Volkswagen, Chinese self-driving firms Momenta, Pony.ai, and Baidu, as well as a recent deal to create a premium robotaxi service using Lucid Gravity SUVs equipped with a self-driving system from San Francisco-based startup Nuro.
These deals are finally beginning to materialize into commercial services. For instance, Uber and Waymo launched a robotaxi service earlier this year in Austin. Now, Uber has expanded to the Middle East with WeRide in Abu Dhabi — with even more cities to come, including Dubai.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi forecast in the company’s third-quarter earnings report that there would be autonomous vehicle deployments on the Uber network in at least 10 cities by the end of 2026.
Uber and WeRide have previously shared plans to expand to 15 cities throughout the Middle East and Europe, eventually scaling to thousands of robotaxis. That would represent a massive leap for WeRide, which today has more than 150 robotaxis in the region.
