Famous investor Benjamin Graham said: "In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine."
That quote sure holds true today, after Uber Technologies (UBER 1.01%) shook up the market with its announcement that it will deploy a fleet of robotaxis as demand for autonomous driving vehicles begins to fire on all cylinders. If the market is indeed a short-term voting machine, the market has cast its vote, and Lucid Motors (LCID +0.58%) looks like the real winner of this partnership. Lucid's stock popped well over 40% on the news, while Uber traded marginally higher.
Let's dig into what this massive development means for the young electric vehicle (EV) maker.
Best of the best?
When it comes to selecting partners for such a massive deal, Uber could have done a lot worse than selecting the EV company that's brash enough to claim "maker of the world's most advanced electric vehicles."
NASDAQ: LCID
Key Data Points
More specifically, on Thursday, Uber announced a partnership that would unleash more than 20,000 robotaxis over the next six years. As previously mentioned, part of the partnership includes Lucid, but another partner is also in the mix: Nuro, an autonomous vehicle start-up. It breaks down like this: Uber will invest $300 million in Lucid, while Nuro develops the self-driving technology that Lucid will deploy in its vehicles to supply Uber with robotaxis.
Uber, Nuro, and Lucid's robotaxi prototype. Image source: Lucid Motors.
"This investment from Uber further validates Lucid's fully redundant zonal architecture and highly capable platform as ideal for autonomous vehicles, and our industry-leading range and spacious well-appointed interiors, as ideal for ridesharing," said Marc Winterhoff, Interim CEO at Lucid, in a press release. "This is the start of our path to extend our innovation and technology leadership into this multi-trillion-dollar market."
This development is a pretty big deal for Lucid. While manufacturing of the 20,000 vehicles in question will be spread over six years and unlikely to start until late next year, it still represents a strong order for the company that just set a quarterly record for deliveries at only 3,309 vehicles, during the second quarter. Moreover, consider that Lucid delivered only 6,418 vehicles during the first half of 2025, and you can understand that 20,000 vehicles for Uber is nothing to sneeze at. In fact, it's about as many vehicles as Lucid hopes to deliver for the full year.
Strategic change
This partnership marks a new era for Uber, which previously exited the robotaxi space in 2020, and signals that the company's strategy going forward will revolve around partnerships with multiple technology developers. It's also not the only deal Uber is working on. In April, the company announced that Volkswagen will supply its ID.Buzz vans for commercial service in Los Angeles next year.
While Uber is the driving force behind this multi-million-dollar partnership, it arguably has the roughest road ahead. Driverless vehicle technology has been more challenging and more costly than anticipated, and it's dealing with tight regulations and federal investigations. Those hurdles caused many start-ups to close their doors, including General Motors' Cruise and Ford Motor Company's Argo AI.
Uber also has some catching up to do in terms of driverless capabilities. Despite years of delays and missed targets, Tesla did start a pilot program with about a dozen Model Y EVs in Austin, Texas, in June, with plans to expand the service to other U.S. cities later this year. Waymo has also been methodically and quietly growing its operations for years in several U.S. cities with a fleet of roughly 1,500 vehicles. It just crossed 100 million miles of autonomous driving in July.
Ultimately, this opens the door to new opportunities for all three companies. But if the market is indeed a voting machine in the short term, there is reason for Lucid investors to be excited. This gets the company's product in front of new customers, in a new addressable market, with partnerships that were once untapped -- it's a big deal, even aside from the $300 million investment. Lucid has a lot of momentum behind it right now, and if the Gravity SUV continues to accelerate its production and deliveries flawlessly, the young EV maker should enter 2026 poised for a tremendous year.
While Lucid is likely to give back some of Thursday's large gains, there's little stopping Lucid's stock from climbing higher as deliveries ramp for the Gravity -- especially if the automaker can curb costs and cash burn in the year ahead.
