September the 30th, 2026 – Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi arrived in Zagreb and tried out Mate Rimac’s famed robotaxi without a safety driver.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi visited Verne and the Rimac Campus in Zagreb yesterday and rode in a robotaxi without a safety driver, Mate Rimac announced. “Uber is an investor and strategic partner in Verne. Dara tried out the robotaxi without a safety driver in Zagreb and was delighted with the experience. We talked about further cooperation and expanding Verne beyond Croatia with the ‘final’ Verne car without a steering wheel and pedals,” Rimac wrote on Facebook.
Index reports that Uber and Verne have otherwise been cooperating for months now on an autonomous taxi project. Back in March, Verne, China’s Pony.ai and Uber announced a strategic partnership to launch a robotaxi service in Europe, starting in Zagreb. Uber also announced an investment in Verne at that time.
driverless rides are already being tested out in zagreb
At the beginning of September, Verne and Pony.ai began testing rides with passengers in Zagreb without a safety driver or other staff in the vehicle. The tests are taking place on a 22-kilometre route connecting Verne’s headquarters with the area of Zagreb Airport. However, these are vehicles from the Chinese manufacturer BAIC with Pony.ai autonomous driving technology, not the final Verne vehicle without a steering wheel and pedals that Rimac mentions in today’s post. Since August, Uber has also enabled the ordering of autonomous rides via its app in Zagreb. In that phase a licensed operator was still behind the wheel, while fully driverless rides were introduced as separate tests.
the final report for the eu-funded project has been submitted
Mate Rimac’s announcement comes on the same day that Project 3 Mobility, the company developing Verne, submitted its final report to SAFU on the last day of the deadline for the robotaxi project financed from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. According to what remains unofficial information, the company is not requesting recognition of the remaining part of the already paid advance in the final documentation. Verne had 179.5 million euros in non-repayable EU funds approved for the project, and back in July 2023 it received an advance of 89.75 million euros. SAFU earlier confirmed to Index that of that amount around 8.77 million euros had been justified so far, while around 80.98 million euros had not been justified.
The project formally ended on the 30th of August, after which a 30-day deadline for submitting the final documentation began. SAFU now has 60 days to check the reported costs and documentation, and during the procedure it may also request additional information. Only after the check is completed will it be known how much of the paid advance will be recognised and how much money, if any, Verne will have to return.
the primary contracted goal was not completed in time
The key problem of the EU-funded project remains the fact that by the deadline it was not confirmed that a fully autonomous Level 5 vehicle had been produced and homologated, which was one of the main contracted results of the project. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said after the deadline expired that the project had not received final homologation from the competent institution in Germany and that it had not been completed by the end of August.
At the beginning of September, Verne revealed that it was ready to return the funds if the final evaluation showed that the contracted obligations had not been fully met. At the same time the company claimed that during the project test prototypes of fully autonomous electric vehicles had been confirmed and appropriate tests carried out. Mate Rimac’s meeting with Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi therefore concerns the continuation of Verne’s commercial development and cooperation with Uber, while the final evaluation procedure for the EU-funded project continues separately.
