Waymo announced on Wednesday an expansion of its self-driving operation to London in 2026, the company\u2019s second venture outside of the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It comes as the Department for Transport in the U.K. accelerated plans to have self-driving pilots across the country, with the timeline for pilot services being pushed forward from mid-2027 to 2026. Waymo plans to ship its autonomous vehicles to London in the coming weeks, with safety drivers behind the wheel to get a better lay of the land.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Waymo has said it will then work with the U.K. government to \u201csecure the necessary permissions\u201d for a fully autonomous pilot in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
London presents many new challenges for Waymo, as it is less car orientated than the cities Waymo currently operates in such as Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles. Much of the city center has been built up over hundreds of years, with roads built during a time when horses were the primary mode of transport. Waymo may also find the amount of cycle lanes (and cyclists that don\u2019t adhere to traffic laws) to be a challenge not faced as regularly as in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to bring the reliability, safety and magic of Waymo to Londoners,\u201d said<\/a> Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. \u201cWaymo is making roads safer and transportation more accessible where we operate. We\u2019ve demonstrated how to responsibly scale fully autonomous ride-hailing, and we can\u2019t wait to expand the benefits of our technology to the United Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n Alongside Phoenix and Los Angeles, Waymo also operates a fully autonomous service in the San Francisco Bay Area. The metro area of Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia also have Waymo operations through Uber.\u00a0<\/p>\n Outside of the U.S., Waymo is working with Japanese taxi company Nihon Kotsu and ride-hail app GO to collect driving data, although this is in a limited capacity.<\/p>\n If Waymo receives its license to operate in London, it may have competition from British self-driving startup Wayve, which also plans to offer rides in partnership with Uber. It recently received $2 billion in funding at an $8 billion valuation, with Microsoft and SoftBank lead investors in the round. Nvidia has also looked into investing $500 million<\/a> in the startup.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Labour government in the U.K. has been trying to present itself as a champion of leading-edge technology and business. It recently signed the Technology Prosperity Deal with the U.S., with commitments on AI, quantum computing, infrastructure and emerging tech. Alongside this came a slew of investment agreements<\/a> from leading U.S. tech giants, such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon, into the U.K. economy through data centers and research.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m delighted that Waymo intends to bring their services to London next year, under our proposed piloting scheme,\u201d said Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander. \u201cBoosting the AV sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment, and opportunities to the U.K.\u201d<\/p>\n The government intends to spend a year studying the travel data from Waymo, Wayve, and any other operators that sign up to the pilot scheme. In 2027, if all goes well, it will then permit self-driving services to run more broadly in London, and potentially outside of the capital at a later date.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last month, a massive peer-reviewed study analyzed Waymo\u2019s performance over 56 million rider-only miles, and <\/strong>the results were pretty wild<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The post Waymo Robotaxis Coming to London<\/a> appeared first on eWEEK<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Waymo announced on Wednesday an expansion of its self-driving operation to London in 2026, the company\u2019s second venture outside of the U.S.\u00a0 It comes as the Department for Transport in the U.K. accelerated plans to have self-driving pilots across the country, with the timeline for pilot services being pushed forward from mid-2027 to 2026. Waymo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cybersecurityinfocus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Way more on Waymo<\/h2>\n