Pony.ai

Autonomous Vehicles · Mobility · Robotaxi

Partnership

Pony.ai and Uber expand deal to deploy 2,000+ robotaxis across Europe

Local partners will own the fleets, letting the Chinese firm scale without shouldering Europe's heavy vehicle and regulatory costs.

• Pony.ai and Uber announced an expanded partnership on August 14, 2026 to deploy more than 2,000 Pony.ai robotaxis across Europe, plus new plans for the Middle East.
• Pony.ai is a Chinese autonomous-driving company that already runs paid, fully driverless robotaxi services in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other tier-one cities.
• The rollout builds on Zagreb, Croatia, launched with Uber in spring 2026, and will extend to four more unnamed European cities in phases with no fixed timeline.
• The joint-deployment model splits roles three ways: Pony.ai supplies L4 self-driving technology, Uber provides its booking and payment platform, and local partners like Croatia's Verne own and operate the vehicle fleets.
• Pony.ai says it has reached city-wide breakeven unit economics in multiple Chinese markets, a commercial proof point few Western robotaxi rivals can yet claim.
• The collaboration dates back to May 2025; Uber is separately pursuing similar asset-light robotaxi tie-ups with Waymo, WeRide, and Wayve in London, Madrid, and Tokyo.
• By offloading vehicle ownership and regulatory burden to local fleet partners, Pony.ai sidesteps the capital costs that have made robotaxi expansion prohibitively expensive elsewhere, testing whether autonomous mobility can move from isolated pilots to repeatable scale.