The Chinese autonomous vehicle firm Pony.ai and Uber are expanding their deal: 2,000 robotaxis in four European cities. Which cities and when has not been said. It will be announced "in phases" - a formulation which translated means the contract is signed and the plan is not finished.

One thing we do know in advance. The previous European announcement from the same two firms was Zagreb, with the local company Verne, part of the Rimac group. So the first European robotaxi is not going to Paris, Berlin or Milan - it is going to a city four hundred kilometres from Skopje.

The division of labour is one that anyone who has worked with a foreign partner recognises immediately. Pony.ai from Guangzhou provides the technology. Uber provides the platform and the users. And the "local supplier" gets the rest: maintenance, cleaning, charging. The fleet, they admit themselves, may be owned by different partners depending on the market. The software and the app are theirs; the metal, the tyres and the night shifts are somebody else's.

That is neither a scandal nor a secret - it is the model. But it is worth naming before somebody packages it as a European technological success. When the value of a single ride is divided up, the largest share does not stay with whoever washes the vehicles.

Uber so far has partnerships with over 30 autonomous vehicle firms, which tells you they are not betting on a technology - they are betting on who survives. Pony.ai operates in four Chinese cities and is already in talks with local authorities in Europe and the Middle East, including Qatar. The two firms first linked up in May 2025, then with a focus on the Middle East.

For a reader in Skopje the question is not whether the robotaxi will be in Zagreb. The question is who will write the regulations when it reaches our streets too - and whether by then anyone will have read the Zagreb contract at all.