Uber Putting $100 Million into EV Charging for Robotaxis

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You may recall that Uber founder and CEO at the time Travis Kalanick said in 2015 that Uber would buy all of the robotaxis Tesla could produce by 2020, estimated to be 500,000 at the time. Then Elon Musk got into his own fantasy of operating them through Tesla and Tesla owners instead.

By 2020, of course, Tesla had produced zero robotaxis. Even by the end of 2025, Tesla didn’t have actual, unmonitored robotaxis on the road. However, the industry has progressed and there are now several companies operating completely human-less robotaxis. In the US, Waymo is of course leading the way.

Uber is still eager to make a big shift to self-driving robotaxis, and it has partnered with Waymo in some markets. But now we get news of a big infrastructure investment related to this. Uber is reportedly planning to invest $100 million into EV charging infrastructure for robotaxis. Naturally, unless you want to pay someone to charge those self-driving vehicles, you need some sort of adequate self-charging infrastructure in place.

These investments would initially be in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Dallas. Uber plans to eventually partner with multiple robotaxi companies on actual robotaxi deployment — WeRide, Waabi, Lucid, Nuro, May Mobility, Momenta, and Waymo of course. For its part, though, it seems to want to have more control over the charging side of these partnerships.

“Cities can only unlock the full promise of autonomy and electrification if the right charging infrastructure is built for scale. That infrastructure needs to work for today’s drivers and the fleets of the future,” said Uber’s global head of mobility, Pradeep Parameswaran.

In addition to building some infrastructure itself, the company is making “utilization guarantee agreements” with EVgo for various major US cities as well as Electra, Hubber, and Ionity in Europe.

On Uber’s latest shareholder call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company would make “targeted growth-oriented investments aligned with the 6 strategic areas of focus.” That includes self-driving vehicles/robotaxis. “With the benefit of learning from multiple AV deployments around the world, we’re more convinced than ever that AVs will unlock a multitrillion-dollar opportunity for Uber. AVs amplify the fundamental strengths of our platform, global scale, deep demand density, sophisticated marketplace technology, and decades of on-the-ground experience matching riders, drivers, and vehicles, all in real time,” Khosrowshahi added.

So, the robotaxi race is still on, and Uber is still trying to be at the forefront of it.