EVwire brief: Verne, the Rimac-founded robotaxi startup that was kind of supposed to be the European pure-play vertically integrated robotaxi answer to Tesla and its Cybercab, announced a deal with Pony AI and Uber. The Arcfox T5 robotaxis are now already validating on Zagreb streets and will roll out further soon.
The details of the partnership:
The vehicle used is Pony AI equipped electric Arcfox Alpha T5 Robotaxi (the one pictured above, produced by BAIC). Note that this is not Verne’s own robotaxi.
It will be deployed in both Uber and Verne’s own networks.
Uber “intends” to invest in Verne as part of the strategic partnership.
In Zagreb, Croatia, deployment is “already underway including public-road validation”, before expanding to additional cities in Europe and beyond.
Verne will act as fleet owner and service operator.
Verne will lead the process of ensuring market readiness and obtaining European regulatory approval for these launches.
Partners plan to scale to a fleet of thousands of robotaxis over the next few years.
Interestingly, zooming in, I see the side AV test text still says “Project 3 Mobility”, which is a former name of Verne. The official entity, perhaps.
There was no mention of its own Verne Robotaxi (below), but I’ve been told this bespoke vehicle is still the end goal, and details on that are coming later.
The status of this vehicle program is currently unknown — the most recent update we got was directly from Mate Rimac about 3 months ago, when he showed us the 61 prototypes on a lot that Verne had produced to date.
Here’s a quick video with more Zagreb footage of the new partnership testing:
Things to note about this deal (Jaan’s takes):
This Uber’s intended investment is an important bit here: a ‘necessary evil’ (not that evil) to scale up the company has likely come at a right time, and seems to be either a prequisite to a Series B (the $100M Series A was raised in February 2024), or somewhat of a replacement depending on how well the talks have been going.
Verne will also benefit from the easier scaling-up of all the operational sides where it wants to be vertically integrated itself eventually:
the operations & service (gets utilization for its fleet management hubs),
the customer-facing hailing app (gets to ramp up service for customers quicker, not dependent only on its own service slow ramp-up),
The utilization for its own robotaxi fleet — as soon as the first Verne’s own robotaxis hit the streets, they get rides through the Uber app, while its own customer-facing app might not have the reach
a technology switch? I have a gut feeling that we are seeing Verne drop Mobileye as the AV partner for its robotaxi, and opt for the “NVIDIA x everyone” or partner with Pony AI for the sensor suite instead. Remains to be seen, no official info yet.
Verne had also received EU funding of €179.5M in a project “covering the entire concept and production cycle of an autonomous electric vehicle, from “formulated technological concept” to “system completed and qualified”.
I found that the end date of this EU project is March 31st, 2026 — is this why we saw the announcement and test vehicles go live now?
screenshot from Verne’s website on the EU funding
There are a lot of interested parties. If this hadn’t been a Uber + Pony AI deal, we would have very likely seen Verne partner with Baidu + Lyft for this, dropping the Baidu RT6 robotaxis in instead. The two sides might have been at the table together.
The part of their press release saying “Verne will lead obtaining European regulatory approval for these launches” is not insignificant — it’s something that Pony AI really needs as it expands through Europe via such partnerships. This is the way into Europe for the Arcfox robotaxis too, because most of its other partnerships seem to be tied to Stellantis.
In all cases, we at EVwire keep rooting for Verne to bring it’s robotaxis on the streets of Europe and will be watching closely.
Source: Verne
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