Ride-hailing company Uber and Israeli artificial intelligence firm Autobrains are launching a robotaxi programme in Munich with a fleet of self-driving cars, the companies announced on Monday at the GTC technology conference in Taipei.
The cars will drive at Level 4 autonomy, where no driver attention is required, meaning passengers can sleep, work or watch films during the journey.
This also makes vehicles without a conventional cockpit possible, since no human intervention is needed. However, the vehicle may only operate within a pre-defined area — for example within central Munich or on specific motorway sections.
The project is built on the computing platform of chip giant Nvidia.
At the heart of the strategic partnership is a fundamental shift in approach for commercial autonomous mobility, namely the abandonment of bespoke specialist vehicles. Existing robotaxi services, such as Google sister company Waymo, rely on highly customized vehicle fleets with complex sensor arrays on the roof.
The new Munich programme instead establishes a so-called "OEM-agnostic" model, meaning the system can be easily integrated into existing series-production vehicles from a wide range of manufacturers, such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen.
The aim is to open up the possibility for the automotive industry to bring its own vehicle platforms into an autonomous ride-hailing network without enormous development outlay.
The technological centrepiece of the project is Autobrains' so-called "Agentic AI." Unlike conventional end-to-end AI models, which process the entire driving task as one large system, the Autobrains approach breaks the driving process down into specialized, independent software agents.
One AI agent assesses right-of-way rules, another monitors pedestrians, and other agents handle tasks such as lane changes. An overarching system evaluates these dimensions of traffic simultaneously and makes binding decisions in real time.
Munich serves as the consortium's European test laboratory. The choice of location was driven not only by the city's dense urban infrastructure and its proximity to leading carmakers, but above all by Germany's legal framework.
German legislation on autonomous driving permits driverless operation under certain conditions within defined operational areas.
The launch of the commercial service is subject to regulatory authorizations that are still pending.
For Uber, the Munich project represents a strategic double play: the mobility giant is already testing autonomous driving in the region with Chinese technology partner Momenta, and the second project further expands its presence in the European driverless mobility market.
However, important details remained unclear at the Taipei announcement. It is not yet known which vehicle models will be deployed first or who will operate the fleet. It also remains unclear whether safety drivers will be present in the vehicle at the start of the trial, and in which exact area and from when the test drives will take place.
