Uber曾卖掉自动驾驶业务，如今为何砸100亿美元杀回Robotaxi？

TL;DR - Uber plans to spend $10B expanding its robotaxi footprint — investing in AV startups, buying autonomous vehicles, and building its own AV fleet operations — five years after selling its self-driving unit to Aurora. It marks a strategic shift from pure demand aggregator to participant in the robotaxi stack, and the market reacted with a ~5% stock drop on weak near-term guidance and doubts about the spend.

• Strategy arc: in-house AV R&D from 2015 (including the Otto acquisition), retreat after the 2018 fatal test crash and cost pressure, sale of the AV unit to Aurora in 2020, then a 2023 Waymo platform partnership, and now direct capital deployment.
• Trigger: Waymo's proof of durable commercial demand — cited at 500K+ paid trips per week, thousands of driverless vehicles across multiple US cities, and hundreds of millions of autonomous miles — raised the risk that AV operators could own the customer entry point themselves.
• Portfolio approach rather than a single bet: investment in UK-based Wayve, a Stellantis–Wayve–Uber L4 vehicle-platform tie-up (June 2026), a Wayve–Nissan–Uber pilot in Japan using Leaf vehicles, and Middle East work with WeRide; Chinese players (Apollo Go, WeRide, Momenta) increasingly use Uber as an overseas distribution channel.
• Framing: the hard problem is no longer driving autonomy alone but operating driverless fleets at ride-hailing-grade reliability, shifting competition from technology to full-stack ecosystems spanning AV software, vehicle manufacturing, and demand.