inDrive plans to test driverless robotaxis in Central Asia in 2027, the company said, according to TechCrunch. The rollout would lean on Pony.ai, the Chinese autonomous driving firm, for the self-driving stack, and on Nvidia for the in-vehicle compute.
For inDrive, autonomy is a bet on a region it already knows well. The company built its business outside Uber's strongest markets, with a deep presence across Central Asia and other emerging markets, where it competes on a model that lets riders bargain over fares. Adding robotaxis would open a part of the market that is still almost entirely human-driven in the region.
The pairing also underlines how concentrated the supply of robotaxi technology has become: a comparatively small number of suppliers — Pony.ai, plus the silicon and software from Nvidia — can now equip an entrant with no carmaking background at all. Public testing is still at least a year out, and the 2027 date is a target rather than a committed launch.
