Uber picks Munich for its next robotaxi push, with Autobrains and Nvidia
The ride-hailing company is betting that Germany’s automotive heartland, and a less sensor-heavy approach to autonomy, can finally make robotaxis scale in Europe.
Munich is about to become a test of a particular theory: that the cheapest way to put a driverless taxi on a European street is to stop building special cars for it. Uber said on Sunday that it will launch a robotaxi programme in the German city alongside Autobrains, an Israeli autonomy firm, with the vehicles running on Nvidia’s DRIVE Hyperion platform.
The announcement was made at Nvidia’s GTC conference in Taipei, and the deployment is contingent on German regulatory approval.
The choice of city is not incidental. Munich is the home of BMW and a dense cluster of suppliers, and it offers the mix Uber says it wants: tight inner-city streets, fast ring roads, and what the company politely calls “a thoughtful German regulatory framework.”
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