EVwire brief: Tensor and Volt Premium Taxi are partnering to bring driverless robotaxis to Bulgaria, with an initial order of 200 vehicles in Sofia and a longer-term goal of scaling that fleet to up to 2,000 across the region.
Volt bills itself as the top upscale taxi operator in the region, and it's calling this the first fully autonomous robotaxi fleet anywhere in the Balkans. The cars themselves are Tensor's Robocar, a Level 4 vehicle the company already sells for private ownership, repurposed here to run exclusively as driverless taxis.
Sofia gets the cars first. Once that's running, Volt plans to push into other markets in the region rather than stopping at the capital. Servicing and support won't fall to Tensor, either, as Volt intends run its own maintenance operation for the fleet in-house.
Tensor celebrated the deal in a post on LinkedIn:
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Volt Premium Taxi founder Oggy Popov framed the deal as more than a fleet refresh:
"The future of urban transit isn't just electric, it's autonomous and around-the-clock. By introducing Tensor's state-of-the-art robotaxis to Sofia, we aren't just updating our fleet; we are establishing an entirely new ecosystem for premium, driverless mobility in Eastern Europe."
That in-house setup is itself part of the pitch. No other upscale operator in Eastern Europe has built that kind of hands-on experience running a driverless taxi network yet, giving Volt Premium Taxi a head start if the model proves out. Tensor, for its part, points to the compute underneath the Robocar, built in partnership with NVIDIA, Oracle, and Arm, as the piece that makes the whole thing work.
Tensor CEO Jay Xiao tied the Sofia deal back to how the Robocar was designed in the first place:
"The exact same engineering rigor and advanced technology that make the Tensor Robocar perfectly suited for personal ownership are what make it an ideal asset for commercial fleets. Our purpose-built, automotive-grade Level 4 architecture is engineered for the ultimate reliability and full-stack redundancy.
“By designing for the highest standard of individual consumer expectations, we have built a physical AI platform that inherently helps fleet operators like Volt scale seamlessly and maintain continuous, round-the-clock operations."
There's no locked-in date for driverless rides to actually start. The legal groundwork, at both the EU and Bulgarian level, is still being worked out.
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Context:
Tensor, which holds California's second-ever permit for fully driverless passenger operation, unveiled the Robocar in 2025 as what it calls the world's first Level 4 vehicle built to be sold to individual owners as easily as it can be put to work in a commercial fleet.
Volt isn't the first to hear a 2,000-vehicle number out of Tensor. Late last year, Tensor and Danish car-sharing operator GreenMobility signed a letter of intent to bring up to 2,000 Robocars to Copenhagen, though that deal is non-binding.
Tensor's other confirmed fleet deals stayed vaguer on scale. Lyft, in the US, reserved only hundreds of Robocars without a precise count, and Marti, in Turkey, hasn't disclosed a number at all. What's new with Volt is a firm order, with 200 vehicles confirmed today, and up to 2,000 later on.
Source: Volt Premium Taxi press release, Tensor on LinkedIn
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