Lucid Motors has entered right into a partnership with European mobility platform Bolt that might convey robotaxis made by the California firm to the continent.
The 2 corporations announced Thursday that Bolt “goals to deploy at the least 25,000 totally autonomous autos” constructed on Lucid’s upcoming mid-size EV structure, which is meant to be smaller and cheaper than its present choices.
The announcement follows a serious restructuring at Lucid Motors beneath its new CEO, Silvio Napoli, who recently laid off practically 20% of the corporate’s workforce and delayed the launch of the primary car to be constructed on the mid-size platform by virtually a yr to the second half of 2027.
Lucid Motors has but to deploy a business robotaxi model of both of its two present autos. The corporate has spent the final yr working in partnership with Uber and autonomous car agency Nuro to launch a robotaxi version of its Gravity SUV. That’s speculated to occur by the top of 2026.
Napoli has stated he believes the enterprise of changing into a robotaxi supplier would have margins that “vastly” exceed these of “the normal retail mannequin.”
Bolt intends to personal and function the fleet, in accordance with a press launch. The 2 corporations “will work collectively from the product-development stage on an autonomous driving system (ADS)-ready car platform,” it says.
The autos will use Nvidia’s autonomous car compute and sensing structure (referred to as Hyperion), however the corporations didn’t say which firm (or corporations) will present the autonomous driving software program. Lucid declined to supply any extra data past what was within the press launch.
No cash has modified palms, and Bolt has not positioned an order for the autos. There’s additionally no public timeline for deployment — solely that Bolt considers this a “main step towards” its “ambition of 100,000 autonomous autos on its platform by 2035.”
“Autonomous driving in Europe requires knowledge, software program, autos, and operations to work as one system constructed for European roads and regulation,” Markus Villig, founder and CEO of Bolt, stated in a press release. “Lucid brings a world-class platform, and collectively, we’ll co-design the car and software program based mostly on our knowledge and greater than a decade of working expertise throughout greater than 850 cities. Nobody is best positioned to function autonomous mobility providers effectively at scale.”
Napoli, in a press release, stated, “Bolt’s attain and working experience make it a perfect companion to scale autonomous mobility throughout Europe.”
.
Once you buy by way of hyperlinks in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t have an effect on our editorial independence.