Lucid Takes On Tesla’s Robo-Taxis. Stock Jumps on Self-Driving Partnership With Uber.

Lucid stock jumped on a robo-taxi partnership. Coming into Thursday trading, Lucid stock was down about 24% year to date.

Shares of luxury vehicle maker Lucid soared Thursday after the company announced a self-driving partnership with Uber Technologies and Nuro.

Lucid shares closed up 36.2% at $3.12, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.5%. Uber stock dropped 0.3% to $90.50. Nuro is privately held.

Lucid will provide the cars, Uber the ride-hailing network, and Nuro the self-driving technology. The service is expected to launch later next year. Uber aims to deploy 20,000 or more Lucid vehicles equipped with the Nuro Driver over six years, according to the news release.

The agreement represents car sales for Lucid. The news release indicates either Uber or third-party fleet operators will own the cars. Pricing for the cars wasn’t disclosed.

Lucid didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Lucid, however, is a luxury vehicle producer. A Lucid Air sedan starts at about $70,000. Investors might expect the new service to be a high-end offering.

It’s a lot of cars for Lucid. It’s expected to produce about 20,000 vehicles in 2025. (Production and sales should roughly align.) Lucid produced 9,029 cars in 2024.

Robo-taxi services are expanding thanks to AI computing. Tesla launched a robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, on June 22. Alphabet’s Waymo completes more than 250,000 self-driving cab rides a week. Waymo and Uber also collaborate on robo-taxi services.

“Nuro has spent nearly a decade building an AI-first autonomy system that’s safe, scalable, and vehicle-agnostic, proven through five years of driverless deployments across multiple U.S. cities and states,” said Nuro CEO Jiajun Zhu in a news release. Nuro vehicles currently operate in California and Texas.

Coming into Thursday trading, Lucid stock was down about 24% year to date.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com