A rendering of the sixth-generation Waymo Driver on Hyundai’s all-electric IONIQ 5 SUV. | Supply: Waymo
Waymo LLC introduced final week that it plans to convey its robotaxi providers to London in 2026. The corporate stated its providers will help town’s in depth community of bus, tube, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure.
“We’re thrilled to convey the reliability, security, and magic of Waymo to Londoners,” stated Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. “Waymo is making roads safer and transportation extra accessible the place we function. We’ve demonstrated the way to responsibly scale totally autonomous ride-hailing, and we are able to’t wait to broaden the advantages of our know-how to the UK.”
Over the approaching months, Waymo plans to put the groundwork for its service in collaboration with its fleet associate Moove. The Mountain View, Calif.-based firm stated it’s going to additionally interact with native and nationwide leaders to safe the required permissions for its business ride-hailing service in London.
Within the U.S., the Waymo Driver has already pushed over 100 million totally autonomous miles on public roads and supplied greater than 10 million paid rides. The corporate stated it’s now driving greater than 2 million totally autonomous miles and offering over 1 / 4 million rides per week. Waymo presently operates providers in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin.
Waymo already has ties to the U.Ok.
London and Oxford are residence to Waymo’s first worldwide engineering hubs. These hubs embrace groups advancing large-scale, closed-loop simulation, a growth methodology for totally autonomous driving know-how.
The firm can also be partnering with Jaguar Land Rover, a British model. Waymo makes use of Jaguar’s all-electric I-PACEs, outfitted with the Waymo Driver, throughout its deployments.
“I’m delighted that Waymo intends to convey their providers to London subsequent 12 months, beneath our proposed piloting scheme,” stated Secretary of State for Transport Heidi Alexander. “Boosting the AV sector will improve accessible transport choices, alongside bringing jobs, funding, and alternatives to the U.Ok. Chopping-edge funding like it will assist us ship our mission to be world leaders in new know-how and spearhead nationwide renewal that delivers actual change in our communities.”
Waymo hopes to assist London obtain its transportation priorities, which embrace targets for lowering the variety of folks killed or critically injured on town’s roads. The corporate’s knowledge reveals its automobile is concerned in 5 occasions fewer injury-causing collisions and 12 occasions fewer injury-causing collisions with pedestrians in comparison with people.
Robotaxis to roll out worldwide
London isn’t Waymo’s first abroad deployment. In April 2025, the corporate started testing its automobiles on public roads in Tokyo. Throughout the testing, educated drivers manually drive Waymo automobiles throughout seven central Tokyo wards. The corporate stated this handbook operation will present its engineers with expertise to check, refine, and adapt its autonomous driving know-how to native visitors patterns and street options.
Along with London and Tokyo, Waymo has plans to broaden to launch providers in Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, and Nashville within the coming years.
Waymo, which was named The Robotic Report‘s Robotic of the Yr in 2025, has emerged as a transparent chief within the robotaxi house. Within the U.Ok., Waymo will face competitors from Wayve, a London-based developer.
In June 2025, Wayve introduced plans with Uber to develop and launch public-road trials of SAE Degree 4 autonomous automobiles in London.
