Most attention on developments in the rideshare world lately has been on the expansion of autonomous robotaxis, from Waymo arriving in new cities to Zoox deploying its toaster-shaped, steering-wheel-free rides across Las Vegas and San Francisco.

But simultaneously, one of the ground transportation world’s more classically analog institutions – the black car, or chauffeured limousine – is having a moment too.

In March, Uber announced that it would be acquiring limousine company Blacklane. That happened just a few weeks after it announced Uber Elite, an elevated tier of Uber Black that includes newer vehicles, airport meet-and-greets, and even champagne waiting for you in the car upon pickup (well, maybe). Lyft, meanwhile, has acquired a company called TBR Global Chauffeuring.

It’s a trend: Obi CEO, Ashwini Anburajan, was one of the experts cited in Joann Muller’s recent article in Axios, “As robotaxis spread, luxury may soon mean having a human driver.” So why are Black cars are becoming fashionable once again?

Robotaxis’ rise is showing that human drivers serve a real purpose.

Taking an autonomous car has its downsides. On a practical level, there’s no driver to help you with your luggage. But there are also safety implications to being alone with a robot.

Speaking at the Curbivore conference in Los Angeles last month, Ashwini shared a story that had happened just hours prior: She took a Waymo to get to the conference venue in downtown LA, but it was stymied when it encountered a pair of men in an argument in the middle of the road that looked like it might turn physical. The Waymo halted and wouldn’t restart or turn around them; Ashwini admitted that, in the moment, she didn’t know what to do and would’ve felt safer if there had been a human driver in the car.

It’s an anecdote that underscores one of Obi research’s most surprising (and most consistent) findings: That women are more hesitant about taking robotaxis than men, despite widespread predictions that they’d be enthusiastic about not being in a car driven by a stranger.

For airport rides, the case for black cars is getting stronger.

And not just because a passenger at San Jose’s airport – one of the few in the U.S. that allows Waymo vehicles to drop off passengers curbside – said that the autonomous car drove off with his luggage in the trunk, a mishap that quickly went viral in the news. The explosion in popularity of rideshare services like Uber and Lyft over the past 15 years has resulted in serious congestion at airports, particularly at older terminals that were not built to accommodate that volume of traffic.

LAX in Los Angeles, for example, has unveiled a plan to place a surcharge on standard rideshare vehicles if the passenger wants to be picked up or dropped off directly at the terminal versus at a forthcoming People Mover rail station further away. Black cars are not subject to such a charge.

Already, at major airports like Boston Logan (BOS) and Seattle-Tacoma (SEA), rideshare pickups are in designated garage spaces that involve a walk away from the terminal, whereas a black car can do a curbside pickup.

As standard rideshare prices rise, black cars may not be the splurge they once were.

Obi’s recent research reports have consistently found that the price of a standard Uber or Lyft ride in a major U.S. city continues to rise. Long gone are the days of the investor-subsidized UberX rides that were a fraction of the price of a traditional taxi: Our recent update to our report about Tesla Robotaxis in San Francisco found that the average overall cost of an Uber or Lyft ride is rising there, too.

But where do black cars fit into this?

For many rideshare users, a trip to or from the airport is their primary use case for a black car, even if they typically take standard rideshare (or public transit). So, for the best data on where the gap lies today between standard rideshare and black cars, we analyzed the cost of airport rides in New York City.

For an airport ride, an Uber Black is about 40% more expensive than a standard Uber. A Lyft Black is only about 25% more expensive. That’s a narrower gap than one might expect, especially when you consider premium black car offerings like curbside pickup and advance scheduling based on your flight time.

Standard rideshare prices are rising at a faster pace than that of black cars. Obi’s research found that the average price of both a Lyft and an UberX has risen by over 21% just in the time from Q4 2025 to Q1 2026. Black cars haven’t risen in price as much: Lyft Black is up by ~18% and Uber Black is up by less than 6% in the same time period.

As Joann Muller said in her Axios piece, “as robotaxis scale, luxury may shift from high-tech rides to high-touch service.” We’ve already seen that old-school tech can now be considered premium products: Vinyl record sales are at new highs, despite the availability (and lower prices) of endless music on streaming services. The likes of Uber and Lyft are similarly signaling that they see a human touch as an appealing, yet still relatively affordable luxury.