Waymo self-driving cars with roof-mounted sensor arrays traveling near palm trees and modern buildings along the Embarcadero, San Francisco, California, February 21, 2025.
Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s Waymo is bringing its driverless ride-hailing services to London, the first European market for its robotaxi.
The company said in a release on Wednesday that it plans to start test drives on London’s roads in coming months, with human safety specialists at the wheel. It intends to open its robotaxi service next year, assuming it can get permissions from regulators as well as local and national leaders.
London will mark the company’s second international city after Tokyo, where testing began in early 2025.
Waymo has been aggressively expanding in the U.S., and now offers a commercial service in the Los Angeles area, Phoenix, San Francisco, Atlanta and Austin, Texas. The company has also announced plans to start robotaxi services in Miami and Washington, D.C., and said in August that it obtained permits to begin testing its autonomous vehicles with trained safety drivers on board in New York City.
In London, Waymo’s fleet will be comprised of Jaguar iPACE electric vehicles equipped with the company’s Waymo Driver autonomous systems. Waymo said it already employs engineering teams in Oxford and London, and that it plans to work with Moove to handle operations and maintenance for its fleet.
Moove provides vehicle financing to drivers who want to purchase a new vehicle for ride-hailing, and offers services like cleaning, some repairs and charging of electric vehicles to transportation businesses including Waymo and Uber, which is an investor in the startup.
In June, the U.K. announced an accelerated framework for commercial pilots by AV ventures, an effort to bring self-driving investments to the region. London also established a “Vision Zero” goal earlier this year to eliminate all serious injuries and deaths in its transportation systems by 2041.
Waymo says its system “is involved in five times fewer injury-causing collisions, and twelve times fewer injury-causing collisions with pedestrians compared to humans,” according to the company’s analysis of its own data.
The company has also reported that its self-driving vehicles have logged 100 million “fully autonomous miles” on public roads, and provided more than 10 million paid rides to passengers to-date.
Waymo is part of Alphabet’s “Other Bets” segment, which brought in revenue of $373 million in the second quarter on a loss of $1.25 billion. Alphabet plans to report third-quarter results on Oct. 29.
Wayve, a U.K.-based startup backed by SoftBank and Microsoft, previously announced that it plans to bring a robotaxi commercial pilot to London next year. While Waymo uses radar, lidar and other sophisticated sensors in its vehicles, Wayve is developing camera-based systems, an approach that’s similar to Tesla’s pursuits.
— CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.
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