Bolt wants to put 25,000 driverless Lucids on European roads

Lucid and Bolt have announced a non-binding partnership to put at least 25,000 driverless Lucid crossovers on European roads, with no vehicles ordered, no money committed and no deployment date. The only EU-wide type approval route for a fully automated car is capped at 1,500 units a year per type, and national approvals stop at each border.

Lucid and Bolt want at least 25,000 driverless Lucid crossovers on European roads, InsideEVs reported. Bolt’s wider ambition is 100,000 autonomous vehicles by 2035.

Bolt is Estonian and runs ride-hailing across more than 50 countries and 850 cities. Its new unit, Bolt Autonomous Driving Solutions, would set the vehicle requirements and build the fleet operations.

The framework is non-binding, TechCrunch reports. No vehicles have been ordered, no money has changed hands, no date has been given, and the software that would actually drive the cars has not been named.

Nvidia’s Hyperion supplies the compute and the sensor suite. It is not the driving system, and the partners say they will work with autonomous-driving technology partners for that.

“Autonomous driving in Europe requires data, software, vehicles, and operations to work as one system built for European roads and regulation,” said Markus Villig, Bolt’s founder and chief executive.

Regulation is where the number breaks.

Under the EU’s type approval rules, the only route that works across the whole union for a fully automated car is capped at 1,500 units a year per vehicle type.

At that rate, 25,000 cars takes about seventeen years on a single type. Bolt’s 100,000 by 2035 would need a different rulebook.

National approvals are the alternative, and they stop at each border. Croatia cleared Europe’s first driverless service this month under its own rules.

That is Verne and Pony.ai, running a 22km route in Zagreb with nobody in the car, booked through Uber, on Chinese software and a Chinese-built crossover.

Lucid’s own position is the other problem. The Midsize platform this plan depends on was delayed in August, the company cut 18% of its staff, and Silvio Napoli has taken over as chief executive.

It has also promised 20,000 vehicles to Uber since July last year. That is 45,000 autonomous vehicles committed by a company building fewer than 4,000 cars a quarter.

Villig is right that Europe needs the pieces to work as one system. The vehicle here is American, the compute is American, the driving software is unnamed, and the only European service actually running driverless is Croatian with a Chinese brain. Waymo, meanwhile, is targeting Munich for late 2027.