Uber partners with Rimac-backed Verne to launch robotaxis in Zagreb

Uber will offer rides in a planned robotaxi service in Zagreb using vehicles operated by Verne, a Croatian startup backed by Rimac founder Mate Rimac, and autonomous-driving software supplied by Pony.ai. According to TechCrunch, the partners have begun on-road testing in the Croatian capital but did not give a launch date for commercial service; the initial fleet will use the Arcfox Alpha T5, a vehicle developed with Chinese automaker BAIC.

The arrangement divides the robotaxi stack into three companies with three different incentives. Uber controls demand and pricing through its app and keeps the customer relationship, but it does not own the vehicles or the autonomy system. Verne says it will own and operate the fleet and handle maintenance, cleaning, and “back-end infrastructure,” which is where day-to-day safety processes and cost control live. Pony.ai supplies the automated driving system, the component most likely to determine how the vehicle behaves in edge cases.

That split matters because autonomous vehicle failures rarely look like a single point of blame. When a crash happens, investigators typically need high-fidelity sensor logs, versioned software states, and a clear chain of custody for data. If the platform that dispatched the ride is not the fleet operator, and the fleet operator is not the autonomy developer, each party can credibly claim it lacked full visibility into the failure mode. Insurance, too, becomes a negotiation: the operator carries the vehicle risk, the autonomy vendor carries product-liability exposure, and the platform can argue it is merely a marketplace.

The model also changes how “safety” is priced. Uber’s business is maximising utilisation and minimising friction; downtime is a cost. Verne’s business is keeping vehicles clean, charged, and available; it bears the operational cost of pulling cars off the road for investigations or software rollbacks. Pony.ai’s business is scaling deployments; it benefits from more miles and more geographies, but any serious incident can trigger regulatory pauses that hit everyone downstream.

Europe’s regulatory environment adds another layer. A cross-border robotaxi expansion plan means approvals in multiple cities, each with different rules for testing, remote supervision, and data retention. The partners are starting in Zagreb, where Rimac Group is based and where Verne has been testing, but the announcement also frames the project as a template for “new markets” across the continent.

Verne was originally incubated inside Rimac Group as “Project 3 Mobility” and publicly launched in 2024 with 100 million euros in funding, TechCrunch reports. It has talked about a purpose-built two-seater robotaxi and a new factory in Lučko, Croatia, expected to begin operations later this year. For now, the first commercial service will run on a third-party vehicle and a third-party autonomy stack.

In Zagreb, the customer will tap Uber, the car will be dispatched by Verne, and the driving decisions will be made by Pony.ai’s software running in a BAIC-developed vehicle.