Bolt Picks NVIDIA Alpamayo for European Robotaxis

Bolt, the European ride-hailing company better known for taxis-by-app and e-scooters, wants a self-driving fleet in Europe, and it has picked NVIDIA to write the driving software. The company said on Wednesday that it has chosen NVIDIA’s Alpamayo Stack for its European autonomous ride-hailing programme, beginning with Lucid vehicles, according to Bolt’s announcement.

Nothing is driving itself yet. The first step, in Madrid in 2027, is to gather real-world driving data to develop and validate the technology, and Bolt says even that is “subject to regulatory approval”. Behind it sits a much bigger plan: a rollout of at least 25,000 Lucid vehicles built for Level 4 autonomy, meaning they could drive without a human in defined areas, and a Bolt target of 100,000 autonomous vehicles on its platform by 2035.

Madrid first, then Germany and France

Bolt says Madrid is the starting point because the region is “pioneering a structured framework for commercial autonomous mobility in coordination with national authorities”, in the words of Jevgeni Kabanov, Bolt’s president and head of autonomous driving. Germany and France are named as key markets for later. Madrid is quickly becoming a test ground: TSN reported on Tuesday that Waymo plans to start in the Madrid region in 2027.

“Our ambition isn’t to bring autonomous driving to just a handful of cities,” Kabanov said. “We want to make autonomous ride-hailing available at scale across Europe.” He described Madrid as the next step after Bolt’s “first autonomous mobility launch in Luxembourg”.

The 25,000 figure is a plan, not an order book. In NVIDIA’s release from its GTC Berlin event it is described as “a planned European rollout of at least 25,000 level 4-capable future Lucid vehicles”. Neither company has said how many cars will be in Madrid, or when paying passengers might ride without a safety driver.

NVIDIA supplies the brain, Lucid the car

The vehicles will run NVIDIA’s Hyperion computing and sensor platform. Alpamayo Stack is NVIDIA’s full driving software, which Bolt says “combines reasoning AI with classical perception and planning”, with NVIDIA’s Halos safety system on top. Bolt and NVIDIA will adapt the software for European roads and plan to fit it to cars from several manufacturers, starting with Lucid.

Bolt’s role is the service. A dedicated unit, Bolt Autonomous Driving Solutions, will lead development and commercialisation, bringing fleet management, regulatory work and local knowledge. Bolt says it operates in more than 50 countries and 850 cities, with more than 200 million customers and over 4.5 million drivers and couriers on its platform, a ready-made customer base for any future driverless service.

The pitch is that one software stack can travel. “Together, Bolt, NVIDIA and Lucid are turning a global technology supply chain into one product for European cities,” Bolt says, with the aim of a service that works across several carmakers and countries rather than one-off city programmes. Bolt’s notes say NVIDIA’s Halos tools are meant to help build evidence that the combined vehicle and software “perform as intended”, the kind of proof any approval will rest on. “Robotaxis will scale when every vehicle is built on a common, safety-engineered foundation,” said Rishi Dhall, NVIDIA’s vice-president of automotive.

Bolt isn’t relying on one supplier. It says the NVIDIA and Lucid programme sits alongside its separate work with Pony.ai and Stellantis. NVIDIA is pitching the same platform across the European car industry; TSN has covered Volvo Cars and Mercedes-Benz building on it.

Lucid’s Kay Stepper called next year’s data collection “the first steps”. The real milestone will be a Madrid regulator’s sign-off, and the date Bolt’s first Lucid cars take to the city’s streets.