Lucid Motors Partners With Bolt for European Robotaxi Plan
Lucid Motors and Bolt announced a partnership to deploy at least 25,000 autonomous vehicles in Europe using Lucid's upcoming mid-size EV platform. No orders, payment, or deployment timeline have been disclosed.
The mid-size architecture is supposed to be smaller and cheaper than Lucid's current offerings. The companies said they will work together from the product-development stage on an autonomous driving system (ADS)-ready vehicle platform. Bolt intends to own and operate the fleet, according to the press release.
The announcement follows a major restructuring at Lucid Motors under new CEO Silvio Napoli. Napoli recently laid off nearly 20 percent of the company's workforce and delayed the launch of the first vehicle to be built on the mid-size platform by almost a year, to the second half of 2027.
Lucid Motors has yet to deploy a commercial robotaxi version of either of its two existing vehicles. The company has spent the last year working in partnership with Uber and autonomous vehicle firm Nuro to launch a robotaxi version of its Gravity SUV. That is supposed to happen by the end of 2026.
Napoli has said he believes the business of becoming a robotaxi provider would have margins that vastly exceed those of the traditional retail model.
The vehicles in the Bolt partnership will use Nvidia's autonomous vehicle compute and sensing architecture, called Hyperion. The companies did not say which company or companies will provide the autonomous driving software. Lucid declined to offer any more information beyond what was in the press release, according to TechCrunch.
No money has changed hands, and Bolt has not placed an order for the vehicles. There is also no public timeline for deployment, only that Bolt considers this a major step toward its ambition of 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035.
Markus Villig, founder and CEO of Bolt, said in a statement: 'Autonomous driving in Europe requires data, software, vehicles, and operations to work as one system built for European roads and regulation. Lucid brings a world-class platform, and together, we will co-design the vehicle and software based on our data and more than a decade of operating experience across more than 850 cities. No one is better placed to operate autonomous mobility services efficiently at scale.'
Napoli said in a statement: 'Bolt's reach and operating expertise make it an ideal partner to scale autonomous mobility across Europe.'