WeRide is now running full driverless trips on Uber across parts of Abu Dhabi, after both companies confirmed the move in a joint statement on Wednesday, according to Bloomberg. The rollout covers 12 square miles of Yas Island, where riders who order UberX or Uber Comfort may now be matched with a vehicle that has no human in the front seat. The option becomes even more likely when riders choose Uber’s new Autonomous ride type, which stays in the same price area as Comfort. This shift comes almost a year after the companies first launched the route with safety drivers supervising every mile. The expansion does not touch all routes. Highway trips, pickups from Abu Dhabi International Airport, and rides that stretch across the other islands of the UAE capital will still keep a safety operator on duty for now. That supervised territory spans around 30 square miles. The first stage of this partnership began in December 2024, when Uber and WeRide opened the initial supervised service. Both companies now say they plan to widen driverless coverage inside Abu Dhabi and push the partnership into Dubai next. Expand service into more global cities The work between Uber and WeRide goes past the UAE. Back in May, both sides agreed to spread their services into 15 additional cities outside the US and China over the next few years. One of those locations is Riyadh, where rides with safety drivers recently began. Inside the United States, Uber already connects riders to autonomous vehicles through Waymo in Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. These cities run on separate deals but feed into the same Uber app. Uber stepped out of the self-driving development race in 2020, when it sold its internal autonomous unit. Since then, it rebuilt the strategy by forming more than 20 partnerships with companies developing driverless systems. The company has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars into developers, including WeRide, to keep its platform running with both human drivers and machine-led vehicles. Uber said these investments will take time to turn into returns because autonomous fleets remain far smaller than the number of human-driven cars already on the road. Right now, the company runs dozens of WeRide robotaxis in Abu Dhabi and plans to grow the fleet. Show growth across China and beyond WeRide, which trades in the US and Hong Kong, reported a 307 million-yuan loss for the third quarter, which equals around $43 million, narrowing from a 1.04 billion-yuan loss a year earlier. The company holds driverless testing permits in eight countries. A review by BloombergNEF says that Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide, and Pony AI now lead American competitors in the number of robotaxi programs that have moved from testing into commercial service. Much of this activity is still happening inside China, but deployments also run in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore, with plans for Germany, the UK, and other European countries. The robotaxi industry remains messy. Some companies that raised billions collapsed after single accidents or after losing financial backers. But China continues to push money into sectors it calls strategic, including autonomous driving. The country already built a large EV industry over decades, and that supply-chain strength now supports the driverless push. Professor Weisong Shi of the University of Delaware, who runs the school’s Connected and Autonomous Research Lab, said, “In the US, it’s been more market-driven. In China, most of them are government-driven.” He added that none of the current systems perform well in harsh conditions like heavy snow. China also restarted the issuing of robotaxi testing permits this year after months of halted approvals. Regulators paused the process in the second half of 2024 after taxi-driver protests over job risks. Those complaints have now fallen behind Beijing’s national goal to stay in the global race for autonomous transport. Join a premium crypto trading community free for 30 days - normally $100/mo.
