{"id":1883653,"date":"2026-04-15T14:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1883653"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T11:27:11","slug":"uber-goes-all-in-on-robotaxis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1883653","title":{"rendered":"Uber Goes All-In On Robotaxis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Happy Wednesday! It’s April 15, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift \u2014 your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.<\/p>\n

In this morning’s edition, we’re looking at Uber investing in robotaxis, and Nissan pushing back against tariffs on Mexican production. We’ll also look at Lucid getting some new cash in, and Honda recalling minivans.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Uber has done its best to kill taxis, and now it’s turning on drivers \u2014 starting with the drivers on its own app. The company is putting $10 billion into buying either robotaxi fleets or stakes in robotaxi companies, in hopes of cutting those pesky drivers out of its profit margins. From Reuters<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Uber\u00a0has committed more than $10 \u200bbillion to buying thousands of autonomous vehicles \u200cand taking stakes in their developers, breaking from its asset-light “gig economy” business model to avoid disruption from robotaxis, \u200bthe Financial Times reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Reuters could \u200bnot immediately verify the report. Uber did not immediately \u2060respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n

\u200bUber is positioning itself as a marketplace for \u200bmultiple robotaxi operators, and has partnered across much of the autonomous vehicle industry, including with, Baidu, Rivian and Lucid, and \u200bhas outlined plans to launch robotaxi services in \u200bat least 28 cities by 2028.<\/p>\n

These deals put Uber \u200con \u2060track to invest more than $2.5 billion in equity stakes and spend over $7.5 billion on robotaxi fleets in the next few years, FT reported citing their \u200bcalculations based \u200bon analyst \u2060estimates and people familiar with Uber’s deals. The agreements are contingent on \u200bits partners hitting certain deployment milestones.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Between Uber and Waymo, we may soon reach a point where we can hire a rideshare without a cent of our fare ever having to go to a real human person. Won’t that be nice?\u00a0When no one can afford groceries any more, because we’ve all been made redundant by the companies that built their profits on our labor?\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Nissan imports some cars to the U.S. market from Mexico, but it seems the company has suddenly woken up from a yearlong coma to find that doing so now costs money in tariffs. After weighing the financials, it seems Nissan has decided the most profitable route forward is to lobby against those tariffs. From Automotive News<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Nissan Motor Co. has studied moving production of its Sentra sedan and Kicks crossover from Mexico to the U.S. to avoid a 25 percent tariff, but the economics don’t add up, senior executives said.<\/p>\n

“These two products are sourced from Mexico because of the affordability requirements of the segment,” CEO Ivan Espinosa told Automotive News at a media event here.<\/p>\n

“At the moment, it’s not feasible to move them to the U.S.,” he said. “We need to continue working on the cost competitiveness.”<\/p>\n

Nissan is aggressively cutting internal costs, optimizing its lineup and increasing U.S. content in its Mexico-built vehicles to improve affordability in the cutthroat sub-$30,000 segment.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on imports from Mexico is “unfair,” particularly compared with the 15 percent charged on vehicles from Europe and South Korea, Nissan Americas Chairman Christian Meunier said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

These tariffs aren’t new, so it’s not really clear why Nissan is only now putting up a fight. Maybe it took the company a while to run the numbers, or maybe everyone behind the scenes finally got a backlog of newspapers that had been going to the wrong address for a year. Either way, it’s an interesting start to the Nissan Century of Greatness \u2014 but if it gets us a new XTerra, I can’t complain about the methods.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lucid makes some high-dollar luxury vehicles \u2014 I\u00a0had my first experience with the brand’s cars last week, and they’re certainly good \u2014 but the company still needs a bit of extra investor help to keep its feet on solid ground. Enter the Saudi Public Investment Fund, and Uber. Hey, a callback to first gear! From Automotive News<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Lucid Group Inc. named a new CEO and announced $750 million of fresh investment from its two biggest backers as the electric car maker looks to shore up operations at a crucial juncture.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Separately Tuesday, Lucid said it received a commitment for another $550 million from an affiliate of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the EV maker’s majority shareholder. Lucid also expanded its relationship with robotaxi partner Uber Technologies Inc., which will invest another $200 million and purchase more vehicles than it initially agreed to last year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Carmakers partnering with AV-interested rideshare companies always confuses me from a business standpoint, since those two have antagonistic goals:\u00a0One wants to sell as many cars as possible, the other wants to perform the duties of an owned car with the smallest viable fleet. Uber robotaxis would mean lower vehicle ownership, but it seems Lucid is content to take the money for now. Who cares about long-term results when there are quarterly profits to be had?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Honda is recalling Odysseys for airbag issues, but they’re not related to Takata \u2014 or, in fact, any hardware fault with the airbags at all. Instead, a software issue can apparently cause the side airbags not to deploy. From Reuters<\/a>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Honda is recalling \u200c440,830 Odyssey minivans in the \u200bU.S. over a \u200bsoftware error that \u2060may unexpectedly deploy \u200bairbags, the U.S. \u200bNational Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on \u200bWednesday.
\nHere are \u200bsome details:<\/p>\n

A software programming error \u200ccan \u2060cause the side and side-curtain airbags to deploy \u200bunexpectedly, \u200baccording \u2060to the auto regulator.<\/p>\n

The \u200bagency said \u200bthat \u2060dealers will reprogram the software, as \u2060required.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you drive an Odyssey, head on over to NHTSA’s recall checker and punch in your VIN. Maybe don’t be in the car while you do it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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A Brooklyn Dodgers player! Greatest city in the world, baby.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Prices are continuing to drop! Surely this will keep up unabated forever. Everyone buy Hummer H2s right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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It’s gorgeous out, which means it’s Two Door Cinema Club season. Yesterday was honestly a little much on the heat front, I\u00a0came home from the gym and went straight to laying naked on my bed in front of my air conditioner. I\u00a0may have to invest in this newfangled invention called “shorts.”\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy Wednesday! It’s April 15, 2026, and this is The Morning Shift \u2014 your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you’ll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around. In this morning’s edition, we’re looking at Uber […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,247],"class_list":["post-1883653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-jalopnik-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1883653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1883653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1883653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1883653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1883653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}