The rollout of robotaxis on the streets of London is unlikely to happen this year, as regulatory and technical hurdles push back the ambitious schedule set out by the UK government.
Only weeks ago Uber and London-based Wayve were granted the first minicab licences in the capital to allow them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now – and said they would start trips “later this summer” before a full public launch.
In 2025, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, accelerated the proposed timeline for commercial trials of fully driverless taxi services by a year, announcing that they would start in the spring of this year.
However, progress has slowed in recent months and Transport for London (TfL) has still not published the guidance that companies wanting to offer services must follow to win its approval.
Last month, Christina Calderato, TfL’s director of strategy, told the London assembly’s transport committee that the transit authority would not be in a position to start accepting applications “for some time”.
She said: “I do not think we are in a rush to get [the guidelines] out. There is a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes.”
Uber and Wayve have said that more than 100,000 Londoners were on their waiting list for self-driving taxis.
They are racing against Google-owned Waymo and its Chinese equivalent, Baidu’s Apollo Go, to launch self-driving taxi services in London. Robotaxis are now available to hire in more than 20 cities across the US, China and the Middle East.
Earlier this month Zagreb became the first European city to offer autonomous rides to the general public, through Uber, but the service still has a human driver for “onboard monitoring”.
On Tuesday, Waymo announced that it plans to launch commercial operations in Munich, Germany, late next year.
Ben Loewenstein, Waymo’s head of policy and government affairs for the UK and Europe, told the Financial Times that the company was currently “working through the safety approval process” with the transport department and was waiting on TfL’s guidance to gain consent.
He added that Waymo was working towards launching a fully autonomous service “by the end of this year” but would not say whether the company would be able to offer paid rides to the general public in that timeframe.
TfL has granted 15 private hire vehicle licences to Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles equipped with Wayve’s artificial intelligence driving software, as well as surround cameras and radar.
A TfL-licensed private hire driver will sit in the driver’s seat during trips to intervene if necessary, although the software is expected to control the car.
Uber and Wayve plan to launch small-scale commercial pilots with a driver behind the wheel soon.
For its fully driverless launch Wayve plans to switch to a new Nissan Leaf vehicle that is still in production and is due to launch later this year.
Alex Kendall, Wayve’s chief executive, said the company never claimed it would have a fully driverless operation this year.
“I don’t want to put a timeline on it because we want to make sure we pass through [the regulatory process],” he told the FT. “This work is continuing at pace. London is a significant step up in complexity compared to Phoenix or San Francisco.”
Baidu only began testing vehicles in London at the end of last month and has said it plans to launch public rides next year.
Operating taxis without a driver requires approval via a new process, known as an automated passenger services permit, with the government’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. So far, no vehicles have been approved by the DVSA.
