Uber rival inDrive eyes 2027 robotaxi tests in Central Asia with Pony.ai and Nvidia

inDrive is lining up a robotaxi trial in Kazakhstan with Chinese autonomous-driving company Pony.ai and Nvidia, aiming to start testing in Astana in the first half of 2027. The ride-hailing company said Friday that the three firms signed a memorandum of understanding to explore bringing Pony.ai’s vehicles onto inDrive’s platform.

The plan starts with a safety operator in the car, with fully driverless rides as the long-term goal. Pony.ai would supply its Gen-7 robotaxis. inDrive would make them available through its app and run them in Kazakhstan. Nvidia would provide the AI stack underneath it all, including its Hyperion platform and Halos safety system.

The timing fits a wider scramble among ride-hailing companies to get into autonomous cars. Uber earlier this month said it plans to test Pony.ai robotaxis in London, and it has already started supervised autonomous rides with Wayve there. It is also working with robotaxi companies in other markets, including the Middle East.

inDrive is trying to make the same cost-conscious pitch in self-driving that it has used in conventional ride-hailing. Yuri Misnik, the company’s CTO, called the setup “capital-light by design,” and Nvidia’s Ali Kani said the company’s platform could cut development costs by giving operators a ready-made base of sensors and compute instead of forcing them to build everything from scratch. That matters most in places where rides are already relatively cheap and autonomous cars have to compete on price.

Kazakhstan is becoming a useful proving ground. The government announced plans last month to launch autonomous taxi services in 2027, with trials in Astana and two other cities, and it has already set rules for testing on certain public roads. Astana’s snow and ice give the project a harder test than a sunny demo loop ever could. Pony.ai, meanwhile, wants more than 3,500 robotaxis in over 20 cities by the end of 2026, up from 1,975 vehicles at the end of June.