Uber has just announced an agreement today with the company that manages one of the largest fleets in Robotaxi in China, while the driver’s giant is closer to its objective of becoming the clearinghouse of ultimate autonomous vehicles in the world.
Uber and Baidu said They join forces to deploy robotaxis in countries outside the United States and China, with a first emphasis on Asia and the Middle East. Baidu is currently testing vehicles in Dubai and also declared that he possibly wanted to start in Europe.
The Baidu Robotaxi Apollo GO division operates around 1,000 vehicles worldwide, most of which operate in China. The company said it had made 1.4 million trips paid in its driver -free vehicles in the first quarter of 2025, an increase of 75% from one year to the next.
Since the abandonment of its own efforts to develop autonomous vehicle technology, Uber has intensified its efforts to conclude agreements with a variety of companies, Robotaxi leaders like Waymo to deliver robot operators like Service and Avride. The company said it wanted to use its scope and scale to help autonomous vehicles proliferate around the world. And he doesn’t just want to work with a few AV operators – he wants to work with everyone.
Uber doesn’t just want to work with a few av operators – he wants to work with everyone
“We want to work with all software providers,” said Uber Dara Khosrowshahi CEO in a Decoder Interview in May: “Make sure they are safe and affordable, and put them on the market.”
The “ensuring that they are safe and affordable” is really the most important part. If the runners trust Uber – and for the most part, customers seem to trust the company to send them a car if necessary – then it goes without saying that they will extend this confidence to include autonomous vehicles, if and when Uber decides to send them a robotaxi. This is what is happening at the moment in Austin and Atlanta, where Uber’s partnership with Waymo serves as an overview of what has come: Uber vehicles focused on the man working alongside Waymo without driver, all in the same application.
In addition to Baidu, Uber has partnerships with Waymo, Motional, Avride, May Mobility, Momament, Volvo, Volkswagen, Wayve and Weride for autonomous cars; Serve, Coco, Cartken and Nuro for delivery robots; Aurora and Torc for freight; And the Avomo and Moove cars for the management of the fleet.
Uber’s decision to play well with all these companies will probably not be done to the detriment of the impressive future. Uber knows that he will also have to compete with the Robotaxis, especially in markets like San Francisco where Waymo is developing a giant. Customers must use the own Waymo application in SF, and Some reports suggest that Waymo has already captured almost a third of the tension market in this cityThis results in lost income to Uber.
Tesla is one of the missing big names on this list of employees. Elon Musk’s company recently launched a limited and supervised and non -public Robotaxi service in Austin, and said he wanted to develop in California and Arizona in the coming months. Khosrowshahi said on Decoder that he considers Tesla as a competitor, although a minor with “less demand”. And he has questions about the camera perception system only of Tesla which does not include redundant sensors like the Lidar.
“From my point of view – and it’s a judgment – you really need superhuman security,” said Khosrowshahi. “Superhuman, for me, does not mean better than a human. It means five times better than a human. I think that the data suggest that Waymo is at this level. It is not 100% clear for me if the single camera can get there.”
One of the big names missed in this list is Tesla
As a financial decision, Uber’s efforts to swallow the world of autonomous vehicles are intelligent. The company collects the advantages of the deployment of robotaxis on its application – a share of prices income, a positive association with futuristic technology – without having to assume the enormous costs of technology and software development necessary to supply vehicles.
Of course, Uber was once strongly invested in the idea of building its own autonomous cars. But the project has exploded spectacularly, with allegations of secret commercial and patent counterfeiting, as well as a 2018 accident that killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
But this impetus did not completely fade – at least not for the founder of Uber and ex -CEO Travis Kalanick. Remember that it was the guy who supervised the race to develop AV as a pursuit of “existential terms” for Uber. After being ousted from the company in 2017, Kalanick built a Ghost Kitchens startup, but his sight has never really moved from the original dream to have a fleet of Robotaxis. Now he tries to buy Pony.ai, an autonomous automotive company which is mainly based in China. And according to The New York TimesUber could help him finance the agreement.
But under the leadership of Khosrowshahi, Uber mainly focuses on agreements and partnerships. Robotaxi operators team up with Uber because this is where all customers exist. Who wants to spend all his time building a Ridehail application from zero when Uber already has one that is used in most countries in the world?
The latest agreement with Baidu reveals how Uber’s aggressive global expansion can pay dividends. China has its own rules, but if Uber can prove that it can play in cooperation with some of the largest companies in the country, this could help Baidu and other Chinese companies with global ambitions to find their way in new markets. And it could work as well to Uber – if not more.
