Self-driving taxis have travelled over 4 million kilometers carrying more than 7,000 passengers since launch, Dubai Media Office announced Wednesday. This feat marks another milestone in the emirate’s ambitious vision to make a quarter of all trips autonomous by 2030.
High customer satisfaction rating
According to the announcement, the robotaxi program’s 144-vehicle fleet, with 48 cars currently in active service, is now completing close to 50 trips a day. Officials say these drives have secured a 97 percent customer satisfaction rate, a figure they say reflects growing public trust in driverless travel
Providing further details, Ahmed Bahrozyan, CEO of Corporate Technology Support Services Sector, Chair of Autonomous Transport and Aerial Taxi Committee, said: “The service has achieved a 97 percent customer satisfaction rate, reflecting strong acceptance of the technology and the quality of customer experience. The operational performance represents an important milestone in Dubai’s journey towards its strategic target of making 25 percent of all transportation trips autonomous by 2030.”
The driverless taxi rollout is the latest step in a long -running campaign by the RTA to reshape how Dubai’s more than 4.5 million residents move. More than 348 million people used Dubai’s public transport, taxis and shared mobility services in the first half of 2026 alone, with average daily ridership reaching 1.9 million, as per the RTA.
A widening rollout
The distance milestone follows a series of commercial launches this year. In March, the RTA started commercial robotaxi service in the beachside neighbourhoods of Umm Suqeim and Jumeirah, deploying 100 autonomous taxis through partnerships with Uber, Chinese autonomous driving firm WeRide and Dubai Taxi Company.
In April, Dubai Taxi Company and Chinese tech giant Baidu partnered to launch fully driverless ride-hailing through Baidu’s Apollo Go app. It marked the platform’s first deployment outside China. The project started with a fleet of 50 cars that officials plan to expand past 1000 in the coming years.
Both efforts followed a January regulatory approval that gave Apollo Go the emirate’s first permit to test fully autonomous vehicles without a human safety driver on board.
The RTA realises this ambition cannot be fulfilled without proper infrastructure to support these plans. The authority has announced that it will build the Dubai Autonomous Zone, a 15-kilometer corridor linking Al Jaddaf metro station, Dubai Creek harbour, and Dubai Festival City that is designed to knit together driverless metro trains, robotaxis, robobuses, delivery robots, and even un-manned water taxis, called abras. Additionally, the RTA las year approved a framework to trial autonomous heavy trucks on freight routes connecting Jebel Ali Port, Al Maktoum International Airport, and other logistics hubs.
The 2030 target
The current push goes back to a directive from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, who set a goal of making a quarter of all trips in the emirate “smart and driverless” by 2030 as part of Dubai Self-driving Transport Strategy.
Mattar Al Tayer, RTA’s Director-General and Chairman, said the strategy is meant to reinforce Dubai’s position as a “leading hub for business and the economy” while cutting emissions, easing congestion, and improving road safety. RTA projections estimate the shift could save the emirate roughly 396 million transportation hours annually and reduce traffic-related losses by billions of dirhams.
As of early 2024, Al Tayer put the share of Dubai trips already running autonomously, largely through the driverless Dubai Metro, at 9.4 percent, with officials saying they remain on schedule despite global headwinds facing the self-driving industry.
