Overview
- The two companies announced the Europe-focused deal on Thursday and committed to deploying at least 25,000 fully autonomous vehicles, with Bolt setting a longer-term goal of hosting 100,000 autonomous cars on its platform by 2035.
- Lucid and Bolt will co-develop a vehicle platform designed for SAE Level 4 operation that is expected to be based on Lucid’s upcoming Midsize architecture and to run on Nvidia’s Hyperion compute and sensor stack.
- Bolt said it will own and operate the fleet, set vehicle, software and rider-experience standards, and build the city partnerships and fleet infrastructure needed for commercial service.
- The cars are planned to be produced at Lucid’s new Saudi Arabia factory, due to start early next year, but the companies have not disclosed a rollout timeline or the size of required investment.
- Companies cite Europe’s significantly stricter safety and regulatory rules and growing competition from operators such as Uber, Waymo, Pony.ai and Verne as the main constraints and drivers shaping how quickly services expand.