With GM’s Cruise robotaxis once again being tested on Dallas streets, a rival robotaxi service could be arriving in 2025—following the launch of a new Uber Eats sidewalk robot delivery service in Dallas later this year.
Those new autonomous mobility and delivery offerings are heading toward North Texas thanks to a new partnership between San Francisco-based Uber Technologies and Austin-based Avride. The two companies announced a multiyear strategic partnership today that will bring Avride’s delivery robots and autonomous vehicles to Uber and Uber Eats.
Rolling up first will be the sidewalk robots, available “in the coming weeks” on the Uber Eats platform in Austin. The sidewalk robot service will expand to Dallas and Jersey City, New Jersey, later this year, the companies said.
The Uber robotaxi service is slated to launch for riders in Dallas later next year.
How the services will work
After the launches, when an Uber customer requests a qualifying ride—or when an Uber Eats customer orders some food—the Uber and Uber Eats apps may offer them the option to have the “trip” fulfilled by an autonomous vehicle or an Avride delivery robot.
Founded in 2017, Avride says its dual offering delivers “a unique advantage from developing and operating both autonomous cars and delivery robots that leverage mutually enhancing technologies.” The company’s delivery robots are already making commercial deliveries in the U.S. and South Korea, Avride added. The company’s autonomous cars are “currently being tested on public roads.”
“Were excited to partner with Uber as we scale our operations and work together to further improve the delivery experience for both consumers and merchants,” Avride CEO Dmitry Polishchuk said in a statement. “We plan to expand the total fleet of Avride robots operating within Uber Eats to hundreds in 2025, followed by the launch of our robotaxi service.”
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said autonomous mobility and delivery “hold a ton of promise for consumers and communities.”
“We’re excited to partner with Avride to bring their technology to more people in more places, as they continue to scale,” he added in a statement.
Follows news of WIng’s partnership with Serve Robotics
The Uber-Avride news follows our report earlier this week that Wing—a drone delivery startup owned by Google parent Alphabet—is partnering with San Francisco-based Serve Robotics, a leading sidewalk robot delivery company. Those two companies will be piloting a new service in Dallas “in the coming months” that will pair Serve’s rolling sidewalk delivery robots with Wing’s high-flying drones in a two-step load-and-drone delivery process.
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R E A D N E X T
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Fast food keeps getting faster. Thanks to a new partnership between California's Serve Robotics and Wing, robots will soon be rolling down Dallas-area sidewalks, taking restaurant orders to be plucked skyward by a hovering Wing drone for deliveries "as much as 6 miles away."
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With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy grant, the city of Arlington said it will conduct an innovative pilot program to test the efficiency and scalability of using autonomous, electric drone and robot delivery vehicles. The goal: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions while serving residents in need.
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Double takes abounded in Dallas Friday. San Francisco-based Cruise began testing its robotaxis in the city without a human behind the wheel. For now, company employees are along for the ride in the back seat of "under 10" robotaxis in the last stage of testing before the service is opened to the public.
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You've microwaved it. Air-popped it. Range-topped it. Grill-popped it. Maybe you even campfire-popped it by your kids' tent in the back yard. But no matter how you popped it, you probably said the same thing: It just doesn't taste like movie popcorn. Now Plano-based Cinemark is solving that by partnering with DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats on home concessions delivery.
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An Uber Eats driver was involved in a car crash in Southlake recently, and the city's police and fire departments went to the scene. The driver turned out to be OK, but was unable to finish delivering an order of fresh-grilled hibachi from Hashi Japanese Kitchen. That's when Corporal Tejada and Officer Grace stepped up to finish the job for the gig worker—and in a sense, gig workers everywhere.
