Uber and Wayve launch London’s first robotaxi service, with a safety driver in every car
London has its first robotaxi service, and there is a person sitting behind the wheel of every car. Uber and Wayve began carrying passengers on Thursday in a fleet of Ford Mustang Mach-Es, each one supervised by a licensed driver who can take over.
Uber owns and operates the vehicles while Wayve, the British company founded in Cambridge, supplies the driving software.
The service has been coming for a while. Uber opened a London waitlist in June, and most of what has happened since has been regulatory rather than technical.
The fleet is deliberately small. Uber is starting with fewer than 20 cars, and Transport for London approved up to 15 on a one-year trial when it granted the permissions in August.
What TfL actually licensed is the detail that shapes everything else. The modified Wayve cars were approved as private hire vehicles rather than as automated vehicles, which...
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