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London’s popular black cabs may soon face a new competitor: Waymo.
The Alphabet-owned company said today that it intends to launch a fully driverless robotaxi service in London, starting in 2026, marking its first effort at international expansion.
The UK currently has no fully autonomous vehicles on the road. The government said it will begin trialling fully driverless transportation services in the spring of 2026, although full deployment of self-driving taxis won’t come until Motor Vehicles Act 2024 It comes into full effect in late 2027.
Waymo says it will begin deploying supervised robotaxis, with safe drivers at the wheel, to collect data in London in the next few weeks. When it launches commercial services next year, the driverless robotaxis will be fully available through Waymo’s ride-hailing app. The vehicles will be maintained by a company called Movewhich provides fleet services, in addition to a range of financial products for mobility companies. (Moove also operates Waymo fleets in Phoenix, Austin, and soon in Miami.)
The government said it will begin trialling fully driverless transportation services in the spring of 2026.
Waymo has been eyeing London for a while. last month, Telegraph I mentioned The company has begun advertising for staff in the British capital, including a “Fleet Readiness Commander” and several engineers. Waymo says it has “strong relationships” in the UK, citing its engineering centers in London and Oxford. These centers include teams developing large-scale closed-loop simulations, a “gold standard development method for full self-driving technology,” the company says in a blog post.
London won’t be the first overseas city to see Waymo’s driverless Jaguar SUV. The company recently sent Twenty vehicles to Tokyo For a small experiment, although it has not yet committed to launching the service there.
To make sure, Waymo is testing its vehicles in several cities It may or may not launch a commercial service. It does this to see how its vehicles adapt to new cities after traveling tens of millions of miles in its core markets of San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Ideally, the company is trying to get to a point where it can bring its vehicles to a new city and launch a robotaxi with minimal testing as an introduction.