Uber, Wayve launch London’s first robotaxi service

Uber and British start-up Wayve launched their commercial robotaxi service in London on Thursday, although passengers will still have a human supervisor behind the wheel.

“It’s going to be a phased deployment, so we’re going to start off small,” Wendy Lee, head of product at Uber, told AFP, adding that the number of vehicles will be “in the order of dozens to start”.

The rollout makes Wayve the first company to launch a robotaxi service to the public in London, ahead of rivals Waymo, owned by Google-parent Alphabet, and China’s Baidu, which has partnered with Lyft.

Autonomous taxis are already operating in the United States and China, but London is only the second city in Europe to have them, after Zagreb, where Croatian company Verne operates the service using technology from China’s Pony.ai, with a supervisor on board for safety.

During a demonstration in London for AFP on Tuesday, an operator briefly took back control of the vehicle at an intersection near Big Ben.

“This is exactly why we start with safety operators behind the wheel. It’s to ensure that people are safe when they’re driving,” said Kaity Fischer, head of business development at Wayve.

It remains unclear when Uber and Wayve will launch fully autonomous taxis, with both companies unable to give an exact date.

Waymo told AFP that it intends to launch vehicles carrying passengers “with nobody behind the wheel by the end of the year, subject to government approval”.

Lyft, which plans to launch a service with Baidu’s Apollo Go in 2027, said it is waiting for guidance from London’s transport authority, Transport for London (TfL), on the issue.

The guidelines should be issued “shortly,” according to TfL, which added that no operator has yet begun the approval process for fully autonomous vehicles.

Wayve and Uber currently have safety authorisation for 15 supervised vehicles.

In London, where the fares will initially be the same as for regular Uber rides, the launch marks Wayve’s first mass-market rollout.

Wayve plans to expand next to Tokyo and then to 10 more cities with Uber, according to Fischer.