Beginning today, everyone has the chance to catch a ride in a Motional Robotaxi on the @Uber ride hail network in Las Vegas, all you need is the Uber app on your phone to be able to get matched with our Robotaxis. I am so proud to have @Motional Robotaxis available to the public again.
We have always had a strong operational capability, giving more than 130,000 rides to the public in total so far and this experience has taught us a lot. We are looking forward to building on that experience with this supervised service phase to capture customer feedback - from users who ride with us through our partnership with Uber. That feedback is essential to ensuring we have a very comfortable and seamless robotaxi experience before we transition to rider-only later this year.
We are now providing autonomous rides with our all-new AI-first autonomous driving system, which is the result of refocusing our technology development to ensure we can scale deployments in a more cost efficient way going forward. We are serving locations up and down the Las Vegas Strip, the dense area in the north with hundreds of curbside pick up and drop off locations in Downtown Las Vegas and other shopping areas, such as the Town Square shopping district. This is just a start and we’ll be expanding the areas and list of locations we serve over time.
While we have always received high marks from riders on the safety experience when riding in a Motional Robotaxi, I’m sure that riders will enjoy the broader availability and feel even more confident with the expert driving capability we now offer. Riders will be able to experience the smoothness of acceleration and braking and maneuvering through the often tight and active confines of a rideshare zone while the robotaxi navigates people, luggage, cars, vans, shuttles - and their doors - and even other autonomous vehicles. These are all obstacles we need to be ready to handle, and we are.
It was an exciting moment to be able to once again hail Motional’s Robotaxi through the Uber app on my own phone, and this time with an AI-first AV stack! I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I did.
