Bolt, the European ride-hailing company, has chosen Nvidia’s Alpamayo Stack as the self-driving software for its robotaxi program, which is planned to grow to at least 25,000 Lucid vehicles. The selection was announced on Oct. 21 at Nvidia’s GTC Berlin conference. The first concrete step is small and still needs regulatory approval: Bolt plans to start collecting real-world driving data in Madrid in 2027.
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The 25,000 figure is a planned rollout, not a fleet on the road. The release gives no date for carrying passengers, and Bolt has not said which Lucid model it will send to Spain. The vehicles that would make up the fleet are future Lucid models, which is why both companies’ releases speak of an intended rollout and why the wording here follows theirs rather than treating the fleet as built.
What Bolt and Nvidia announced on Oct. 21
In its release, Bolt says it selected Nvidia’s Alpamayo Stack, a full-stack autonomous-driving software platform, for its European ride-hailing programme, starting with Lucid vehicles. The program is intended to lay the foundation for a rollout of at least 25,000 Level 4-ready Lucid vehicles equipped with Nvidia Hyperion, and Bolt describes that as part of a goal of 100,000 autonomous vehicles across Europe and the wider UNECE region by 2035. Bolt Autonomous Driving Solutions will lead development and commercialisation.
Nvidia’s own release frames it the same way, as a planned European rollout that includes at least 25,000 Level 4-capable future Lucid vehicles built on Hyperion. Nvidia adds that Bolt and Nvidia will adapt the software for European roads, integrate it into vehicles from multiple manufacturers and pair it with Bolt’s fleet-management systems, and that Germany is a priority for later deployment.
How Alpamayo and Hyperion fit together
Alpamayo Stack is the driving software; Hyperion is a reference design for compute and sensors. Nvidia says Alpamayo can run alongside a partner’s own driving software on Hyperion, and its release describes the stack as combining reasoning AI, classical perception and planning, and safety guardrails. Electrek reports that Nvidia’s Halos safety system sits on top, and that the deal shows Nvidia now selling the driver itself, not only chips and sensor designs.
Rishi Dhall, Nvidia’s vice president of automotive, said robotaxis will scale when every vehicle is built on a common, safety-engineered foundation. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and chief executive, called robotaxis the first mass-market application of robotics and physical AI. Both statements are company positioning rather than test results, and neither company has published driverless performance data for this program. Nvidia’s release also announced related products, among them Alpamayo 2 Edge, a 2-billion-parameter reasoning model built on Nvidia Cosmos and designed to run at 10 hertz on its Drive AGX Thor computer, and an open Alpamayo Agentic Factory blueprint expected in early 2027.
Madrid in 2027 and the vehicle question
Madrid is the starting point because of local rules. According to a Reuters account relayed by Let’s Data Science, Jevgeni Kabanov, Bolt’s president and head of autonomous driving, said the Madrid regional government created a permit that allows limited commercial operations before full approval. Bolt told Reuters it expects “tens of vehicles” in Madrid next year. Electrek reports that the cars will not carry riders at first and will instead gather data to develop and validate the software.
The vehicle itself is an open question. The September deal was built around Lucid’s upcoming Midsize platform, which was described on Sept. 17 as designed for Level 4 autonomy and expected to use Nvidia Hyperion. Lucid delayed the Midsize program on Aug. 4 during an operational reset, and Electrek says its first vehicle slipped to 2027. If it is not ready, Electrek notes, Madrid could use existing Gravity or Air models, though Bolt has said nothing on that point.
Where the 25,000 figure sits among Lucid’s robotaxi commitments
Electrek compares the commitments with Lucid’s output. Lucid delivered 15,841 vehicles in 2025 and 10,852 in the first nine months of 2026, and Bolt’s 25,000 sits beside Uber’s commitment of at least 35,000 Gravity vehicles worldwide, which Electrek says rose from an original 20,000. Bolt separately told Reuters, per that account, that Germany and France are the key markets for future deployment. Added together, the two commitments come to about 60,000 vehicles, almost four years of Lucid’s current deliveries by Electrek’s arithmetic.
Lucid now has two robotaxi customers on different autonomy systems: Nuro’s software for Uber’s Gravity robotaxis in the United States and Nvidia’s for Bolt in Europe. Kay Stepper, president of Lucid Technologies and Lucid’s chief digital officer, described the Madrid launch of data collection next year as one of the first steps toward autonomous mobility in Europe, in the Bolt release. No driverless ride date has been given, so the practical test of the plan will be whether the Midsize vehicle arrives on its delayed schedule and whether Madrid regulators allow data collection to begin in 2027 as Bolt expects.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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