Uber's partnering with May Mobility to deploy thousands of self-driving vehicles on its platform across US cities, starting with Arlington, Texas by late 2025. This adds May Mobility to Uber's growing list of autonomous vehicle partners, which already includes Waymo and Lucid-Nuro.

May Mobility's based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has raised over $380 million from Toyota and BMW. They're the same company Lyft partnered with for Atlanta deployment, which launched in September 2025. Now both major ride-hailing platforms are working with May Mobility simultaneously—smart move for the startup to hedge against platform risk.

The robotaxis will initially operate with safety drivers before transitioning to fully autonomous operations. That's the standard deployment model everyone's using to satisfy regulators while getting vehicles on the road. Start supervised, prove safety, remove drivers. Tesla's following the same playbook in the Bay Area and Austin.

Arlington, Texas as the launch city makes sense. It's part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which is huge and sprawling—perfect for testing autonomous vehicles in real suburban/urban conditions without the complexity of dense city centers like Manhattan. Texas is also friendly to AV deployments from a regulatory perspective, which matters when you're trying to scale fast.

What's important here is Uber's multi-partner autonomous strategy. They've got Waymo operating in Austin, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Francisco, and LA. They're investing $300 million in Lucid to deploy 20,000 premium robotaxis powered by Nuro's tech. They're working with BYD on autonomous-capable EVs globally. And now they're adding May Mobility for additional US cities.

That's deliberate hedging. Uber doesn't know which autonomous technology will prove most reliable, which manufacturer will scale fastest, or which regulatory markets will open up first. So they're partnering with everyone, letting them compete, and positioning themselves to win regardless of which technology dominates.

This matters because labor costs are the elephant in the room. California just gave gig workers unionization rights, which could push driver compensation higher. If labor becomes too expensive, autonomous vehicles become the only way to maintain margins. Uber's building that insurance policy now, before they need it.

Lyft's doing the exact same thing. They've got May Mobility in Atlanta, Waymo coming to Nashville, their own Tensor Auto fleet launching in 2027, and deals with Mobileye. Both platforms understand that whoever controls autonomous fleet infrastructure when human drivers become economically unviable will control urban transportation.

The competitive dynamic is fascinating. May Mobility is simultaneously working with Uber and Lyft, which means they're not exclusive to either platform. That's good for May Mobility—they maximize deployment opportunities. For Uber and Lyft, it means they're competing on operational excellence and customer experience, not just technology access.

The US federal government facilitating AV deployment by expanding exemptions from certain safety requirements while maintaining mandatory incident reporting is helping all of this happen faster. Less regulatory friction means quicker scaling, which benefits everyone trying to deploy autonomous fleets.

May Mobility's advantage is they're not trying to build custom vehicles like Amazon's Zoox. They're retrofitting existing models, which is faster and cheaper to scale. That's why they can work with both Uber and Lyft simultaneously—they're not capacity-constrained by vehicle manufacturing.

The robotaxi market is getting crowded fast. Tesla's planning Cybercab production for 2026 with service launching in Austin this year. Waymo's expanding to multiple cities. Zoox is operating in Vegas. Uber's got Lucid-Nuro for premium service. Now Uber and Lyft are both deploying May Mobility's vehicles. That's a lot of autonomous capacity hitting the market within the next two years.

For riders, this means autonomous options are becoming normal across major US cities. If you're in Arlington, Atlanta, Austin, Nashville, Phoenix, San Francisco, LA, or Vegas, you'll soon be able to hail an autonomous vehicle through Uber or Lyft. That normalizes the technology and accelerates adoption.

The analyst caution about "significant engineering and regulatory challenges" is fair but increasingly outdated. Waymo's already doing 100,000+ trips per week. The engineering is solved for specific operating domains. The regulatory challenges are being worked through city by city. We're past proof-of-concept—this is commercial deployment at scale.

What's really happening is Uber and Lyft are preparing for a future where human drivers are either too expensive due to unionization and minimum wage increases, or simply unavailable because autonomous vehicles offer better pay-per-hour (since the "driver" is the platform itself). The multi-partner strategy ensures they're not dependent on any single technology provider when that transition happens.

Both platforms learned from their mistakes trying to build autonomous technology in-house. Uber sold its self-driving unit to Aurora in 2020. Lyft never really tried. Now they're both partnering with specialists—Waymo, May Mobility, Nuro, Tensor—and letting them compete to provide the best technology.

The multi-partner approach also spreads risk. If one autonomous provider has a major accident or regulatory setback, Uber and Lyft can shift volume to their other partners. That keeps service running while the affected provider fixes issues. Operational resilience matters when you're building critical urban infrastructure.

Arlington launching in late 2025 is aggressive timing, which suggests May Mobility's technology is mature enough for near-term commercial deployment. If it works, expect rapid expansion to other Texas cities and beyond. If there are issues, the timeline will slip like every other AV deployment has.

The race is on to deploy tens of thousands of autonomous vehicles before labor costs force the transition. Uber and Lyft are positioning themselves to win that race by partnering with everyone who has viable technology. May Mobility joining that lineup gives both platforms another option for scaling autonomous fleets quickly across US cities.

Source: Reuters