Verne

What Verne is

Verne is a robotaxi company inside the Rimac Group; the affiliation is stated in Pony.ai's announcement of the Zagreb service ^[1]. Its public profile rests on two things: a two-seat electric robotaxi it is developing itself, and a commercial driverless service it runs in the Croatian capital.

The vehicle

The company is building its own electric two-seater robotaxi with no steering wheel and no pedals, based on Mobileye Drive ^[2]. By the end of 2025 it had completed 60 verification prototypes ^[2]. Dropping the steering wheel and pedals is not mainly a styling decision. A car designed without them is meant from the outset to run with nobody at the controls, and the cabin can be arranged around two passengers rather than around a driver's seat and a dashboard. Verification prototypes are the cars a manufacturer builds to check that the design, the sensors and the manufacturing process hold up before series production.

The Zagreb service

On 8 April 2026 Pony.ai, Uber and Verne started a commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb, which Pony.ai describes as Europe's first commercial robotaxi service ^[1]. It runs every day from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and initially covers about 90 square kilometres of the wider Zagreb city centre, including Zagreb Airport ^[1]. Rides are booked through the Verne app, with availability on the Uber app following ^[1]. Under the agreement between the partners, Verne leads local operations, market readiness and regulatory execution ^[1] — the city-specific part of the job: running the fleet, preparing the market and getting permission to operate.

Those three responsibilities explain why a launch like this is slow work. A service area has to be mapped and maintained, vehicles have to be charged, cleaned and serviced somewhere, and a regulator has to be satisfied that the service is safe before paying passengers are carried. Roughly 90 square kilometres is a large but bounded patch, which keeps the operational problem manageable at the start.

The first fully driverless rides followed in September 2026, on a route of roughly 22 kilometres between Zagreb Airport, Verne's headquarters and the city centre ^[2]. An airport, a company base and a downtown core are the three points an operator needs first: a place where travellers arrive, a place where the cars are kept and maintained, and a place people actually want to go.

Uber's stake

Uber's involvement goes beyond supplying a booking channel. Verne co-founder and chief executive Marko Pejković confirmed that Uber has invested in Verne, without disclosing the size of the stake ^[2]. Co-founder Mate Rimac described Uber as an investor and strategic partner, after Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi visited Zagreb and rode in a driverless vehicle ^[2].

Where it fits

Verne is a small company in a race that is being run by much larger ones, and its bet is a narrow one: a purpose-built two-seater for short city trips, sold to passengers through apps they already use, in cities that will license driverless operation. At launch the company said it was already in negotiations with additional cities in Europe, the UK and the Middle East ^[2]. Whether the Zagreb model travels will depend on regulators elsewhere accepting the same kind of service on the same kind of terms.