Uber Rolls Out Driverless Robotaxis in Abu Dhabi with WeRide Partnership

Editorial Team

Last updated 26-11-2025

2 min

Uber has launched fully driverless robotaxis in Abu Dhabi with China's WeRide.

Abu Dhabi stands as the only location outside the US offering Uber rides without human drivers.

The service may expand beyond central Abu Dhabi by year-end, leveraging WeRide's robust infrastructure.

The region's enthusiasm for tech solutions is growing swiftly, reshaping urban transport expectations.

Driverless rides now indicate a rapidly approaching future for Middle Eastern urban transport.

Uber’s latest move in Abu Dhabi has turned a few heads this week, as the company switched on fully driverless robotaxis across the city in partnership with China’s WeRide. It’s a notable first: according to Uber, Abu Dhabi is now the only place outside the US where its platform offers rides with no human driver at all. And believe it or not, anyone booking an UberX or Uber Comfort could find themselves matched with one of these autonomous cars.

The two companies had already flagged this collaboration last year, but seeing it actually land on the streets gives the whole thing a different flavour. I remember chatting with a couple of founders at an Arageek meetup who joked that the region talks about innovation so much that sometimes the tech arrives before people are even ready for it. This feels a bit like one of those moments—exciting, yes, but also a bit of a faff as we all figure out how comfortable we are being whisked around by a machine.

Uber says the plan is to expand service zones beyond the central parts of Abu Dhabi before the year wraps up. WeRide, which is based in Guangzhou, already runs more than 100 robotaxis across the Middle East, so the infrastructure isn’t coming out of thin air. Still, I reckon adoption won’t be spot on right away; change tends to be slow until one day it suddenly isn’t.

On the flip side, the region’s appetite for tech-first solutions is growing faster than many expected. And if there’s anything we’ve learned covering MENA startups at Arageek, it’s that once momentum hits here, it rarely tiptoes. It moves like a sandstorm—loud, sweeping, impossible to ignore. Well… I mean, unless someone forgets to switch the thing on properly, which happend to me once with a supposedly “smart” scooter.

For now, the message is simple: driverless rides are no longer some far-off experiment. They’re rolling through Abu Dhabi today, quietly signalling what urban transport in the region might look like sooner than most imagined.

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