Tesla urges owners to upgrade for robotaxi fleet as Uber beats it to 3-row Gravity SUV for driverless expansion

Tesla has started sending out memos to those who signed up for information about the expansion of its so-called Robotaxi ride-share platform, urging them to upgrade to a newer vehicle to take advantage.

It currently operates a pilot robotaxi ride service in Austin, Texas, but the Model Y SUVs that it uses for the real-world test run are owned and operated by Tesla itself.

Early next year, however, Tesla is expected to open its Robotaxi platform to owners' vehicles. Judging from the pilot in Austin, only those whose FSD option is powered by HW4 or newer kit, will be able to take advantage, hence the upgrade memo.

After Tesla announced an expansion of the robotaxi service area in Austin, Waymo followed suit. Now Uber, whose robotaxi service runs Waymo vehicles, too, has signed up an agreement with premium EV maker Lucid to add it to the mix, but with a model that Tesla has no real answer to.

Uber will buy no less than 20,000 Gravity SUVs that Lucid will equip with Nuro's autonomous driving kit straight from the factory. This marks a significant escalation in the robotaxi wars, and Tesla's upgrade memo may be one of the ways it plans a rapid expansion of its driverless fleet to catch up with the likes of Uber.

Tesla's advantage is using only the stock HW4 computer and cameras that come with its newer vehicles, so it could potentially flip the switch on a plethora of vehicles to make them robotaxis in one fell swoop. Uber's Lucid Gravity SUVs, on the other hand, will have autonomous driving equipment by Nuro that is sleeker and more elegant than Waymo's kit, but still requires retrofitting.

While rival vehicle autonomy companies admit Elon Musk may be right that camera-only solutions are more suitable for quicker learning and scaling, they still prefer to play it safe with more sensors and redundancies. It remains to be seen whose approach will turn out better in the end, but Tesla's robotaxi competition seems to be growing just as it is planning to expand in more US cities and add owners' cars to the fleet.

Uber's partnership with Lucid and Nuro will be on public roads in 2026, when Tesla is expected to start adding the Cybercab two-seater to the robotaxi fleet. Tesla doesn't have a true 3-row SUV in its portfolio, though, if we don't count the cramped Model X variants, or the upcoming six-seat Model Y L for China, so it won't have an answer to Uber's driverless Lucid Gravity vehicles when they hit the road.

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