Dubai's Robotaxi Fleet Has 144 Vehicles. Only 48 Are in Active Operation

Dubai's autonomous taxi programme is getting large enough for the operating numbers to matter more than the novelty of seeing a driverless car.

The Roads and Transport Authority says Robotaxis have travelled more than 4 million kilometres and completed 7,613 passenger trips since launch.

The total fleet stands at 144 vehicles.

But that does not mean all 144 are currently carrying passengers.

The active fleet is smaller than the total fleet

RTA says 48 vehicles are in active operation, completing around 50 trips per day.

That distinction matters when assessing the current scale of the service.

A fleet can include vehicles used for testing, operational preparation, maintenance, training or other functions that do not translate directly into daily passenger capacity.

The more useful number for current service intensity is therefore the active fleet rather than the headline fleet size alone.

The service has moved beyond closed testing

Baidu's Apollo Go vehicles are now part of fully driverless commercial operations in Dubai.

RTA says riders can access fully driverless Apollo Go vehicles through Uber, with New Horizon Luxury Transport acting as fleet operator.

That changes the user experience from participating in a technology test to ordering autonomous transport through a familiar consumer platform.

Four million kilometres needs context

The cumulative distance is evidence that Dubai's autonomous vehicle programme has reached meaningful operational scale.

It should not, however, be read as 4 million kilometres of paid passenger journeys.

The published figure covers Robotaxi operations more broadly, while RTA separately reports 7,613 passenger trips.

Those numbers measure different things.

There is now infrastructure behind the vehicles

Dubai has also opened Baidu Apollo Go's Autonomous Vehicles Operations and Control Centre.

The 2,000-square-metre facility includes fleet management, maintenance, charging, software updates, safety testing, simulation and training.

That is important because autonomous transport does not scale through vehicles alone.

It requires an operating layer behind them.

The next question is utilisation

RTA reports customer satisfaction of 97 percent and around 50 trips per day from the active fleet.

As deployment expands, the more revealing indicators will be trips per vehicle, operating hours, service areas, interventions and the proportion of the total fleet that moves into regular passenger service.

What Arabian Current is watching

Watch the gap between total fleet size and active fleet size, expansion into new service zones, daily passenger volumes and whether utilisation rises as fully driverless booking becomes more widely available.

The next phase is not proving that Robotaxis can drive in Dubai. It is proving how much ordinary transport demand they can actually absorb.