Uber and Chinese autonomous-vehicle developer Pony.ai announced on August 13, 2026 that they are expanding their robotaxi partnership to deploy more than 2,000 self-driving cars across Europe, moving beyond their existing service in Zagreb, Croatia to four more cities that have not yet been named.
What’s changing
The companies launched what they call Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb earlier this year, run day to day by local operator Verne. Under the expanded agreement, Pony.ai keeps supplying its Level 4 autonomous-driving technology and operating know-how, while Uber contributes its ride-hailing platform — booking, payment, and customer support — through its existing app. Neither company named the next cities or gave a launch date, saying details would arrive “in phases.” The agreement also covers plans to bring robotaxis to the Middle East.
“The next chapter for autonomous mobility is about moving from individual launches to repeatable commercial scale,” Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility, Sarfraz Maredia, said in the companies’ joint announcement.
Why it matters
Pony.ai says it already runs a profitable, fully driverless robotaxi service in four Chinese cities. It is one of more than 30 autonomous-vehicle companies Uber has partnered with as it tries to build a global robotaxi network without owning the underlying fleets — an asset-light approach distinct from operators that run their own vehicles. Scaling past a single pilot city will test whether that model can turn a profit at commercial volume in Europe, where regulatory approval and public trust in driverless cars have moved more cautiously than in China.
The push is part of a broader race among ride-hailing and automotive companies to add self-driving capacity, a buildout also fueling demand for the chips and compute described in Tesla and SpaceX’s Terafab plant announcement.