Uber's plan to put Nuro-powered Lucid Gravity SUVs on its app in San Francisco is real and richly funded — but the two permits that would let it charge for a driverless ride in the city haven't been filed, and the test fleet is running in the South Bay, not SF.

The San Francisco Chronicle told readers this week that Uber is "bringing robotaxis to S.F. this year." The plan is real, and it is expensively funded. What it is not, as of early August, is permitted.

Here is what Uber has actually assembled. Its autonomy partner is Nuro, which supplies the self-driving stack; the vehicle is the Lucid Gravity, an all-electric SUV; Uber is the platform that would dispatch them through its app. Riders, when the service exists, can expect a deliberately premium product — Uber has said it will not undercut a human ride or Waymo on price. The cars are meant to show your initials on an exterior light, run a live perception display inside, and connect you to support with a tap.

Now the cap table. Uber owns roughly 11.5% of Lucid after a $500 million investment ($300 million announced in July 2025, another $200 million in April 2026), per Electrek, and has committed to buy at least 35,000 Gravity SUVs over six years. So "this year" is not a neutral forecast; it is the timeline of a company with an equity stake and a large purchase order riding on it.

The regulatory reality is narrower. Nuro holds a DMV driverless-testing permit and a CPUC pilot permit for passenger testing with safety drivers, capped around 45 mph and confined to Santa Clara and San Mateo counties — the South Bay and Peninsula, not San Francisco. The two approvals that would let Uber charge for a driverless ride in the city — a DMV Deployment Permit and a CPUC Driverless Ride-Hailing Permit — had not been publicly filed as of this week.

Consumer Watchdog, citing DMV data, claims Nuro's cars "could not go 700 miles without human intervention" and is backing a ballot measure for a liability shield; Nuro counts 1.7 million autonomous miles with no at-fault crash. Both are interested parties. Watch for the two missing filings — until they land, "this year" is a purchase order, not a launch date.