Happy Friday and welcome to Critical Materials, your source for the biggest stories shaping the future of the auto industry.

Every Friday, we break down the week’s biggest EV news, keep you up to speed on the cars we’re testing, and recap must-read stories from around the web on driverless cars, batteries, charging, and more.

This week, we’re digging in to Uber and Rivian’s $1.25 billion robotaxi deal, the new BMW i3, and more. Let’s dive right in!

– Today’s email was written by Tim Levin, Mack Hogan, Rob Stumpf, and Suvrat Kothari

Uber’s barrage of robotaxi partnerships shows no signs of slowing down. If you can build an EV compatible with autonomous systems, or supply the AV hardware and software yourself, expect a call from Dara sooner or later.

The ride-hailing giant has inked deals with over 20 companies, offering them access to its massive rider base. It’s Uber’s way of leading the autonomous future without shouldering the capital-intensive, deeply complex work of building AV technology or autonomous cars from scratch.

The basic strategy is: Partner with everyone, and let the best technology win. But its tie-ups with car companies take wildly different forms, as its latest deal with Rivian shows. 

On Thursday, the companies announced that Uber will roll out up to 50,000 R2 robotaxis on its app in 25 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe by 2031. Initial deployments will begin in San Francisco and Miami in 2028. 

The company will also invest up to $1.25 billion in the California startup as part of the deal, with $300 million of that already locked in.

Here’s what stuck out to me this week, and what makes this arrangement different from Uber’s other partnerships: Rivian will not only build the cars, but also develop the autonomous hardware and software stack in-house. 

It’s a clear sign of Rivian’s growing ambitions of becoming not just a leading EV maker but also a software and AV powerhouse. At its Autonomy & AI Day in December, Rivian announced big plans to make its vehicles drive themselves, with the help of an in-house chip and a new lidar unit coming to the R2. 

But Rivian has a hill to climb before this partnership can pay off; it’s launched hands-off features, but nothing fully autonomous. (Eyes-off functions, it says, are coming in 2027.) And none of this will be cheap or easy. Rivian pushed out its profitability goal after boosting investments in AV tech.

Uber’s other deals, by contrast, involve many more players and are more complex. 

Take the Lucid deal, for example. The Gravity SUV will serve as the robotaxi, but the autonomous driving stack will come from Nuro, a separate AV technology company. Lucid will put everything together at its Arizona factory. 

Then there's Stellantis, which might have the most complicated arrangement of all:

By comparison, Uber’s partnerships with Zoox and Rivian seem the most straightforward. Zoox produces its toaster-shaped pods itself, and the AV hardware and software are also its own. 

Experts I interviewed for a recent story told me they expect some consolidation in the AV space in the future. And it’s not clear yet which of Uber’s bets will pay off. The ones that do could help set a blueprint for the rest of the AV industry. 

-Suvrat Kothari

Get up to speed on the news that caught our eye this week:

Tesla's Full Self-Driving is once again under the NHTSA's microscope. This time, the feds are focusing on how the system performs in low-visibility conditions like fog or glare. Investigators are concerned that FSD might not adequately detect hazards and could compromise the safety of the system. 

Uber and Nvidia are teaming up to deploy—you guessed it—robotaxis. The pair is targeting 28 separate cities beginning next year and leans heavily on Nvidia's brains to power the AI needed for cars to drive themselves. 

Gas prices got you down? We got you. Check out five of our hand-picked used EVs enough to get you through the worsening gas crisis.

Rolls-Royce is joining the club of manufacturers that ditched plans to go fully electric. Its new CEO pledges to keep its iconic V-12 alive for as long as there is demand from customers.

The Volvo EX30 also joined America’s growing EV graveyard this week. On this week’s Plugged-In Podcast, Mack and Tim dive deep into why so many EVs are getting canceled—and which may be next.

Stellantis EV owners can now use Tesla Superchargers.

Trevor Milton, former Nikola CEO convicted of fraud and later pardoned by President Trump, is back. This time, Milton will build jets. The selling points? Not only can you trust him now, apparently, but his planes will have the largest bathrooms in their class.

We saw the unreleased mid-sized Lucid Cosmos in person. What we learned about it will explain how Lucid managed to get its starting price under $50,000—and that might be enough for some EV owners looking for a more premium option to trade in their Teslas.

Waymo just hit a massive 170 million miles of real-world driving across its fleet of 3,000 vehicles. That's the equivalent of "200 lifetimes of driving," according to the company, or an average of somewhere around 60,000 miles per deployed car. The data shows that its cars are involved in 92% fewer crashes with serious injuries (and 82% fewer crashes involving any injury at all) compared to human drivers.

Remember that GM EV1 privately purchased at auction last year for $104,000? Well, it turns out General Motors is helping its new owner in the quest to restore it. "Whatever you need, we’ll help. We will," said GM CEO Mark Reuss.

Xiaomi's refreshed SU7 gets 315 horsepower, 448 miles of range, and lidar as standard equipment. The price? Under $32,000 in China.

Consumer Reports put 27 EVs to the test on the highway and found that one brand beats its EPA range estimates best of all.

-Rob Stumpf

BMW unveiled the i3 this week, and it has me thinking about EV range: how far it’s come, and where it’s going next. 

The i3 is an electric take on the 3-Series sedan, the core of BMW’s lineup going back decades, so it’s probably the company’s most important EV ever. And judging by the numbers, it looks like BMW understood the assignment. The all-wheel-drive i3 50 xDrive will deliver a whopping 440 miles of EPA-rated range, according to BMW. 

That trounces the Tesla Model 3 by nearly 100 miles. And it underscores a shift happening in the EV market as battery costs fall, technology improves, and competition heats up. 

Here’s why. Up until now, the 400-mile-plus club consisted of two types of vehicles: large, expensive sedans like the Tesla Model S and Lucid Air, and SUVs and trucks big enough to hold an enormous battery, like the Chevy Silverado EV and Rivian R1S. 

The i3 will bring ultra-long-range to a brand-new segment and a lower price point. We don’t know exactly how much it will cost yet, but given the iX3 crossover’s $60,000 starting price, I’d expect the i3 to debut somewhere around $55,000. That would make it the lowest-priced 400-mile EV in America that we know of so far. 

It just goes to show: Despite an EV market that’s getting weirder by the day, the technology isn’t slowing down.

And one more thing. I got the opportunity to check out the i3 in person last year and sit inside. I think it looks stylish in person. And I’m really impressed by the new user interface in the i3 and iX3. My favorite part is the panoramic display that runs along the bottom of the windshield.

It seems like the mantra from a lot of auto companies these days boils down to “more screen.” But, featuring a slew of customizable widgets for weather, music, and the like, the panoramic display is a refreshingly smart piece of tech.

-Tim Levin

Super-SUVs have an impossible mission. The goal is to make something that’s as fun to drive as a low-slung sports sedan but as practical and capable as an all-wheel-drive SUV. I’d also like a meal with the macros of a salad and the taste of a burger, but, unfortunately, you and I are stuck in the real world. 

I’ve driven all of these alleged high-performance SUVs, from the Bentley Bentayga to the Lamborghini Urus. None of them fully deliver on the mission. But, the Polestar 3, which I just spent a week testing, gets the closest. 

Most super-SUVs are dragged around by heavy engines hanging out in front of the driver, making them slow to respond. And because they need to match their pace with their potent engines, most of them are either too stiff, too vague-feeling, or both.

The Polestar, with its 517-horsepower drivetrain, torque-vectoring rear axle, and low-slung battery, feels genuinely balanced. It’s not too fast for its own good. On my favorite road in the country, it left me grinning from ear to ear, with agile handling and utter composure.

Around town, it was even better: buttery-smooth and comfortable. So I loved the car, right?

Not quite. The Polestar 3 was hailed as the first European-designed software-defined vehicle in the U.S., but software is its Achilles’ heel. Every single major control runs through the center display, which is not as intuitive as the screen in a Tesla. Simple things like turning up the temperature require multiple taps, and its minimalist design isn’t easy to navigate at a glance.

The worst part is the update strategy. Rather than launching a complete car and making it better, Polestar launched an unfinished one and has spent over a year and a half trying to finish it. 

For example, the ability to turn the volume up or skip a track via the steering wheel—something you’d get on a 2010 Camry—is still missing. Polestar says it’s coming soon via over-the-air-update, but they also said that when I first drove this car in fall 2024, when we had a different president and a different Pope.

Eight of the 12 steering wheel buttons do nothing at all, which is made all the more insulting by the fact that core controls like the window switches feel cheap. It doesn’t feel like a fair deal at $68,900 base price, and at over $93,000 for this loaded model, it felt insulting.

Luckily, I’m not the only one balking at the price: Polestar 3s are currently up to $18,000 off.

-Mack Hogan

Launched in 2013, the funky i3 hatchback was BMW’s first true production electric vehicle. I see them everywhere in the Bay Area and, honestly, I want one badly. From its body made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic to its easy-access suicide doors to its range-extended option, the i3 is extremely cool and was clearly ahead of its time.

But did you know BMW’s first electric prototype dates back to the 1972? The delightfully orange 1602 Electric had 37 miles of range and had a top speed of 62 mph.

For more, check out this awesome history lesson on BMW’s EV projects courtesy of BMWBlog and our very own Andrei Nedelea.

Thanks for reading Critical Materials. See you next week!

-Tim Levin