Uber has entered into a new deal with Avride to provide customers in select cities with the option of self-driving vehicles. Avride, formerly the self-driving unit of Russian conglomerate Yandex, will introduce its self-driving robots for Uber Eats deliveries in Austin, Texas, with plans to expand to Dallas and Jersey City later this year. Autonomous driving for Uber ride requests in Dallas is set to begin in 2025, but only for “qualifying orders,” with specific details not disclosed. Yandex, before becoming a new business entity, had a similar partnership in 2021 for self-driving robots to deliver food on college campuses in the US and achieved a milestone of 6 million miles in autonomous driving in and around Moscow. Uber, which previously had its own self-driving department, sold the unit to Aurora in December 2020.
