Uber’s autonomous vehicle ambitions just crossed the Atlantic, in a manner of speaking. On August 19, 2026, the company launched its first-ever autonomous rides in Europe, starting in Zagreb, Croatia, giving riders the ability to book a self-driving car directly through the Uber app for the first time on the continent.
The service is a three-way collaboration: Pony.ai supplies the autonomous driving technology, Verne handles fleet management, and Uber provides the booking infrastructure most riders already have on their phones.
How the Zagreb rollout works
For now, every autonomous vehicle on Zagreb’s streets comes with a licensed safety operator seated inside. Full driverless operations are the stated goal, but regulators and operational realities mean the human co-pilot stays put for the immediate term.
The vehicles are operating in key areas of the city, including Zagreb’s city centre. Riders book through the standard Uber app, with no special download or separate platform required.
The partnership that made this possible was formalized back in March 2026, giving the three companies roughly five months to go from signed agreements to paying passengers.
Verne launched what it described as Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in April 2026, a standalone operation that completed thousands of rides before the Uber integration went live in August.
The bigger picture: 2,000 robotaxis, five cities
Zagreb is explicitly a starting point, not a destination. The expanded partnership between Uber, Pony.ai, and Verne targets the deployment of more than 2,000 Pony.ai robotaxis across five major European cities, with Middle Eastern markets also in scope.
Pony.ai has been operating robotaxis in China for several years, accumulating real-world mileage data. Bringing that technology into a European urban environment, with its own distinct road layouts, pedestrian behaviors, and regulatory frameworks, is a genuine test of how well AV systems trained in one geography translate to another.
Verne has benefited from prior European Union funding directed at autonomous vehicle research and development. That funding helped build the operational and regulatory groundwork that made a commercial rollout feasible.
What this means for AV adoption in Europe
Croatia, and Zagreb specifically, appears to have offered a regulatory pathway that larger markets like Germany, France, or the UK have been slower to clear.
For Uber, the Zagreb launch follows the same strategic playbook the company has pursued in the United States: own the customer relationship and the distribution, let the technology specialists own the hard engineering problem. Uber sold its own self-driving unit, Uber ATG, in 2020 and has since partnered with AV developers rather than building the technology in-house.
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