Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company spun out from Google’s self-driving project, is set to make history in 2026 by launching its fully driverless taxi service in London. The move, announced on October 15, 2025, marks Waymo’s first major expansion outside the United States and will make London the first European city to host a service of this kind—one already familiar to residents of San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.
The company’s ambitious plan comes amid a global race to commercialize autonomous ride-hailing, with competitors like Tesla, Uber, and UK-based Wayve all vying for a slice of the future mobility market. According to Mashable, Waymo’s British rollout is a direct response to the growing presence of Tesla’s Robotaxi, which currently operates in Austin, Texas, and the San Francisco Bay Area. But Waymo’s offering will have a distinctly British twist: its fleet will comprise Jaguar Land Rover’s all-electric I-PACE vehicles, equipped with Waymo’s proprietary self-driving technology.
Curiously, these vehicles will retain their left-hand steering wheels—a quirk due to their origins in the U.S. market. Waymo insists that, since no human will be behind the wheel, the steering position is largely irrelevant. Operators monitoring the system remotely are "trained to operate a left-hand drive vehicle safely on UK roads," the company told Mashable. It’s a detail sure to raise eyebrows in a city famous for its right-hand drive black cabs, but one that underscores the technological leap at play.
Before Londoners can hail a Waymo taxi through the company’s app, there’s still plenty of groundwork to be laid. Waymo has already shipped vehicles overseas and begun test drives on London’s streets, albeit with trained human safety drivers at the helm for now. The company is conducting "extensive trials and safety validation work across select boroughs of London," according to its official FAQ. These efforts are being closely coordinated with both Transport for London and the UK Department for Transport as Waymo seeks the necessary permits to operate fully autonomous rides by 2026.
Central to Waymo’s London operation is its partnership with Moove, a vehicle financing and fleet management company. Moove will oversee day-to-day fleet operations, charging, and maintenance, mirroring the companies’ existing collaboration in Phoenix and, starting next year, in Miami. This logistical backbone is essential for scaling up a service that, in the U.S., now boasts over 250,000 paid autonomous rides each week across a fleet of about 1,500 vehicles, according to Rover.
But regulatory hurdles remain. As Car and Driver reports, Waymo is still in discussions with both local and national authorities to secure the green light for driverless operations. The timing couldn’t be more fortuitous: the UK’s Automated Vehicles Act 2024 is set to take effect on January 1, 2026, providing a legal framework for self-driving vehicles and paving the way for public robotaxi pilots from spring that year. UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander welcomed the move, stating, "Boosting the AV sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment and opportunities to the UK. Cutting-edge investment like this will help us deliver our mission to be world leaders in new technology and spearhead national renewal."
Waymo’s arrival is not without its critics—or competition. London’s cabbies, whose black cabs are as much a symbol of the city as Big Ben or the Thames, have been quick to voice skepticism. Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, dismissed the technology as "a fairground ride" and questioned its reliability. "Quite frequently one of them will lock up in the middle of a junction because it gets confused and the police have to come and park, wait for the Waymo man to get his laptop out and get it going again," he told The Guardian. McNamara also doubted there was real public appetite for driverless taxis, quipping, "If there was demand for it, Nigel Farage would be saying get rid of immigrants, have driverless cars instead. But there’s no demand for it."
Despite such skepticism, the UK government is pressing ahead, accelerating rules to allow public trials of autonomous vehicles before the legislation is fully in force. Uber and Wayve have announced their own plans to launch driverless taxi pilots in London around the same time as Waymo, with Uber partnering with Wayve, an AI startup, to bring fully autonomous rides to the UK by spring 2026.
London’s famously complex road network—narrow, winding streets built centuries before cars were even imagined—will be a formidable test for any autonomous system. Waymo, however, is confident in its technology. The company claims its vehicles "significantly reduce the risk of injury-causing collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians compared to human-driven cars." Citing internal data, Waymo says human-driven cars are involved in pedestrian injury incidents 12 times more often than its autonomous vehicles. The cars rely on an array of cameras, artificial intelligence, radar, and lidar sensors—essentially lasers that map the environment in three dimensions—to navigate, even in darkness or inclement weather.
The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has welcomed the arrival of self-driving taxis, seeing them as a crucial step toward greater accessibility and autonomous travel on a larger scale. Waymo’s co-chief executive, Tekedra Mawakana, echoed these sentiments, stating, "We’ve demonstrated how to responsibly scale fully autonomous ride-hailing, and we can’t wait to expand the benefits of our technology to the United Kingdom."
Waymo’s UK venture builds on a growing local presence. The company opened its first European engineering hub in Oxford in 2019 and has partnered with Jaguar Land Rover to equip vehicles with its Waymo Driver technology. In addition to its London plans, Waymo is also preparing to launch services in Tokyo, in partnership with Japanese taxi company Nihon Kotsu and the ride-hailing app Go—its only other international project outside the U.S. at present.
With over 2,000 driverless vehicles and more than 10 million passengers served in America, Waymo is betting big that British riders will embrace the future of transport. If successful, London will become Waymo’s first fully driverless city outside North America, setting the stage for a broader UK rollout after the Automated Vehicles Act is fully implemented in late 2027.
As the city braces for a new era of competition—pitting cutting-edge robotaxis against storied black cabs—the world will be watching. Whether Londoners will trade tradition for technology remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain: the streets of London are about to get a lot more interesting.
