Uber and Rivian Partner to Launch a Massive R2 Robotaxi Fleet in Canada and U.S.

Rivian and Uber have officially joined forces to build a massive fleet of self-driving electric vehicles, signaling a major challenge to the existing autonomous landscape. The partnership, announced on Thursday, aims to deploy at least 10,000 fully autonomous R2 robotaxis across the United States, Canada, and Europe by the end of 2031, with an option to expand the fleet to 50,000 vehicles.

Under the agreement, Uber will invest up to $1.25 billion USD in Rivian through 2031, provided the automaker hits specific technical milestones. An initial $300 million investment is already committed. The first wave of commercial robotaxis is scheduled to hit the streets of San Francisco and Miami in 2028, eventually scaling to 25 cities.

The move puts Rivian in direct competition with Waymo and Tesla. While Waymo currently has a bigger head start with its commercial service in cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, Tesla has been aggressively pivoting toward its own Cybercab and Robotaxi network. Unlike Tesla’s vision of using existing customer vehicles to form a ride-hailing fleet, Rivian’s deal with Uber creates a dedicated, exclusive fleet built on the upcoming R2 platform.

Rivian is banking on its vertical integration to succeed. The R2 robotaxis will use the company’s in-house RAP1 AI chips and a sensor suite that includes 11 cameras, five radars, and LiDAR. This hardware approach differs from Tesla’s vision only strategy, which relies exclusively on cameras and neural networks.

“We’re big believers in Rivian’s approach—designing the vehicle, compute platform, and software stack together, while maintaining end-to-end control of scaled manufacturing and supply in the U.S.,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a statement.

Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe noted that the partnership will accelerate the company’s path to Level 4 autonomy. “The scale of Rivian’s growing data flywheel coupled with RAP1, our state of the art in-house inference platform, and our multi-modal perception platform make us incredibly excited for the rapid advancement of Rivian autonomy over the next couple of years,” Scaringe said.

In videos of Rivian’s Universal Hands Free system seen online, it’s clear the system is far from ready to drive on its own.

While the R2 consumer vehicle is slated for a late 2026 launch in the U.S., these specialized robotaxis will be available exclusively through the Uber app. For Canadian readers, it is worth noting that while the R2 is expected to arrive in 2027, the autonomous Uber fleet likely won’t reach Canadian cities until the later stages of the 2031 rollout, which is a long five year wait.