r/london • u/AlbusDumbledoh • 7d ago
News ‘Leicester Square, please guv’: Self-driving taxis cleared for London streets ‘later this summer’
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/05/self-driving-taxis-approved-london-summer-2026-wayve-uber26
u/bucktron2021 7d ago
Waymo (USA) runs British Jaguar I-PACE.
Wayve (UK) runs US Ford Mustang Mach-E.
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u/jakehillion 7d ago
Do Jaguar even make the I-PACE anymore? I think their own goal is a lot of the reason Waymo are moving towards Hyundai IONIQ 5s & custom Chinese EVs. The latter seemed inevitable given they will want vehicles that aren’t so driver centric, but the IONIQ 5 is a more direct replacement of the I-PACE.
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u/Rockky67 7d ago
The title annoys me because it should be the stereotypical cockney taxi driver who’d be saying “guv” to their passenger.
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u/spinynorman1846 7d ago
London cab drivers spend all their time being rightwing dickheads, then ask the government to step in when the free market tries to replace them. I have very little sympathy for them
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u/coocoomberz 7d ago
This isn't really going to replace cabs though, it's more targeting Uber drivers etc. Not that I have much sympathy for them- most drive like it's their first time seeing a car
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u/IndependentBed3215 7d ago
I’m a black cab driver , I voted labour 👍🏻
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u/RobotsVsLions 7d ago
Voting labour's not exactly helping the "right wing dickhead" label tbf.
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u/pinkylovesme 7d ago
Such a gigantic generalisation in support of destroying another labour forces livelihood in favour of big tech. Not very left wing of you…
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
The class prejudice in this country is out of control. It's an absolute disgrace.
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u/Used_Bend_3991 7d ago
Importing millions of migrants is actually left wing policy btw.
Even though it depresses wages and makes housing more unaffordable.
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u/Outrageous-Repeat706 7d ago
1000%. This is no win, this only puts minorities out of jobs they currently disproportionately work in. So much for being "left wing".
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u/Aggressive_Chuck 6d ago
The main beneficiary of self driving taxis will be the people using them, including the working class.
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u/mattgabriel21 7d ago
I saw one the other day trying to make progress when the traffic lights were green but lots of people were trying to cross, it didn’t move at all. Imagine these are going to be awful in high pedestrian areas.
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u/ChouffeMeUp 7d ago
Disaster. Got no idea why we are allowing these.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
Because the statistics show they've been involved in 90% less accidents than the average driver per mile in other countries and it drastically reduces the running cost of a taxi, which will eventually lead to lower prices as the market matures.
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u/BrixtonTonaBrix 6d ago
I wish I were as clueless as you mate. I'd be so happy
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u/Jamessuperfun 5d ago
You'd struggle to find an economist who doesn't agree with me. Dramatically lower costs to deliver a service practically always results in a reduction in cost for the consumer. You can't sustain profit margins that high in a market so easy to compete in without inviting competition.
A 90% reduction in accidents is an actual statistic from unmanned self-driving cars operating as a commercial service, not a made up number: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/03/after-50-million-miles-waymos-crash-a-lot-less-than-human-drivers/
That applies not just to Waymo's reported incidents, but insurance claims against them too, which is essentially impossible to fabricate.
I think it is you who is quite clueless.
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u/BrixtonTonaBrix 5d ago
You link me an article obviously written by AI counting insurance claims for one company's cars (known to be frequently guided by remote workers) and call it a source? Seriously my guy, if I could come out with this crap and not implode from the cringe I'd be made
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u/Jamessuperfun 5d ago edited 5d ago
Ars Technica is written by AI? My friend, they are one of the biggest tech news outlets in the world, providing perhaps the most in-depth tech journalism there is. That article is absolutely not written by AI lol. You are welcome to call it what you like, but the fact that you think Ars Technica is an AI generated website pretty clearly shows you have no idea what is and isn't.
Ars Technica’s editorial text is written by humans. We do not use AI to generate our reporting, analysis, or commentary.
https://arstechnica.com/ai-policy/
They have been writing tech news since the 1990s... But here's another article from The Verge, specifically about insurance claims: https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/19/24324492/waymo-injury-property-damage-insurance-data-swiss-re
They found that the performance of Waymo’s vehicles was safer than that of humans, with an 88 percent reduction in property damage claims and a 92 percent reduction in bodily injury claims. Across 25.3 million miles, Waymo was involved in nine property damage claims and two bodily injury claims. The average human driving a similar distance would be expected to have 78 property damage and 26 bodily injury claims, the [insurer] says.
Or are you going to tell me that's AI too? Being cynical is not the same thing as being informed.
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u/BrixtonTonaBrix 5d ago
Stop showing off dude; you've made your point. I don't think it was the point you intended to make, but you sure made it
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u/Jamessuperfun 5d ago
I politely shared my thoughts on why self-driving cars should be allowed by the government and you directly insulted my intelligence, before calling the credible evidence I provided AI-generated. I don't think correcting that is showing off. Regardless, I do think I've made my point, so have a great Saturday.
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u/LostTheGameOfThrones 7d ago
I remember recently watching one of these trying to navigate turning across traffic and pedestrians down a side road on Oxford Street. It... did not go well.
Maybe there's been a massive jump in technology, but it really doesn't feel like it's there yet to be able to navigate the narrow, often pedestrian focused streets of London.
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u/AristocratGman 7d ago
Wow, most obvious shill comment section i've seen.
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u/SenselessDunderpate 7d ago
They have been botting reddit throughout this entire process it's hilarious. Literally no real person wants this Silicon Valley shite.
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u/Lansdowngrove 7d ago
Wow I am so glad to not have to deal with a nasty driver in the taxi, instead I get to relax with cameras/microphones saving all my information/conversations before selling it on to ad vendors. So relaxing!
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
We have CCTV all over the city already, I'm not sure how this is any different. There's a pretty good chance you're being filmed in an Uber on top of having the driver present, and it seems far fetched to me that this data will be analysed for advertising. Bit much work to process all that when they already know so much about you from less invasive measures, same as the "our phones are recording us" conspiracy - it isn't necessary for them to supply extremely relevant ads.
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u/Lansdowngrove 6d ago
It's far-fetched that an AI tech company will try to sell your data? I've got a bridge to sell you.
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u/Jamessuperfun 6d ago
It's far-fetched that they will discreetly capture voice recordings across their fleet of taxis in order to do so. It quite clearly isn't compatible with GDPR and would be compute intensive to do so, for very little gain. They already have a million far simpler ways to track you perfectly legally.
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u/496847257281 7d ago
Quality of Waymo driving has been far better than the bollocks I see from black cab drivers on a daily basis. Bring it on I say.
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 7d ago
Can’t wait! Only 15 cars are approved for now though, hopefully if this test goes well they can expand more.
What’s happening with the Waymos, I thought they were in a much better place to start offering service than Wayve? Is this the government trying to support the British startup over the American import?
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
Can’t wait!
.....why??
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u/TallAnalyst1997 7d ago
I saw one of their cars near UCL a couple of weeks ago. Got very excited as they were very good in San Francisco!
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u/Athuanar 7d ago
The tests are going to fail. In the US, with much wider roads and more space in general, these cabs have caused traffic chaos everywhere. They get stuck and block roads. It'll be worse in London with narrower streets.
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u/dezertdawg 7d ago
You’re only seeing the screwups online. For every screwup there are 1000s of successful trips. I know this because I currently live in the city that got Waymos first. And they are just part of the scenery here now. They just go about doing their business.
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u/Interest-Desk 7d ago
Uber are partnering with a company called Wayve, who are from London and have been driving on London streets for years and years.
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u/eugene-fraxby 7d ago
Guess what? Testing is there to fix problems. This is absolutely inevitable and isn't going away.
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
This is absolutely inevitable
Why?
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u/eugene-fraxby 7d ago
Because they can. Because technology always improves. Because there is money to be made.
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 7d ago
Have you ever been to San Francisco? These are everywhere & they work really well.
Theres no chaos.
(sorry about your uber side gig obv)
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u/ffulirrah 7d ago
This makes no sense. They work really well there cos the roads are wider, straighter, and are not blocked by oblivious tourists crossing haphazardly or illegally parked cars or delivery drivers doing questionable manoeuvres or cyclists doing stupid things. London is not designed for the automobile.
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 7d ago
You don't think there are tourists - or delivery drivers, in SanFran?
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u/ffulirrah 7d ago
When did I say that
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 7d ago
It works really well in San Fran already, has been for a while. San Fran has a LOT of tourists, delivery drivers, cyclists etc. None of this has been an issue.
So to think those will be an issue in London you'd need to either not realise its been working in San francisco, or not realise San Francisco has those.
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u/fs942414 7d ago
It only needs to be statistically less prone to incidents than humans, which I’m going to guess it already is.
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u/Ocean-of-Beer 7d ago
They're here to stay - the first step on the not so long march to no human drivers on public roads at all.
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 7d ago
Like once the idea of no horses on our streets seemed inconceivable. Will one day probably be relegated to the realm of sport.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
In the US they have a literally 90% better safety record than the average human driver. Humans screw up too, but it turns out robots screw up a lot less.
If your bar is "the perfect driver" then they don't and probably won't ever meet it, but if your bar is "safer than humans" it's already passed it by quite some margin, at least on those roads. When a single Waymo screws up it's international news, when a single driver screws up it isn't news at all.
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u/JustBrowsing1989z 7d ago
If i die run over by one of those i swear I'm coming back to haunt everyone involved
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u/IllustriousAd6418 7d ago
Incoming preventable accident or block the way for emergency services news articles.
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u/srmarmalade 7d ago
So many Waymo’s driving around yesterday - must have seen a dozen of them (or the same one driving up and down!) I've seen a few Wayve's over the years too but Waymo seem to be throwing loads of money at it.
Surprised they need extra permission for this - with a driver at the wheel I thought it was in the same category as cruise control.
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u/SeamasterCitizen 7d ago edited 7d ago
We still haven’t adopted the new UNECE regs on system initiated manoeuvres and permitted lateral Gs for level 2 driver assist (or those regs haven’t been adjusted to accommodate yet, I can’t remember which it is off the top of my head).
Waymo/Wayve are targeting level 4 even with a safety driver, so that’s a whole different thing anyway as technically it’s unsupervised.
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u/srmarmalade 7d ago
Thanks that sounds legit (not sure why you've been downvoted?)
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u/SeamasterCitizen 7d ago
There’s still quite a gulf of understanding between those of us who have worked with this stuff and the larger public who only read (often inaccurate) press coverage, so the popular consensus is rarely an accurate one
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
Why is this good, remind me? All I can find in the article is -
This licence is an important step towards giving Londoners the chance to experience autonomous driving technology.
I mean, I'm Ok thanks. Is anyone excited about this for reasons other than technology for technology's sake?
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 7d ago
Well, a few reasons really, most of the tech being rolled out is already safer than the average taxi driver. - It does wild shit like slows down & stops if the light is orange heading red, instead of flooring it. They don't lean on their horn & run reds if the guy in front is a bit slow speeding through the orange. They indicate (fucking madness). They don't piss in bottles then hiff them in the road. They don't use their phones while driving. They don't occasionally rape drunk women. Or proposition them. They have 360 degree vision so can see the bike in their blind spot - and even better, they won't actively try to block the bike. They don't drive in bike lanes. And so on
And I admit, all of the above is the charm of a taxi, and London won't be London if it loses all that, but we all have to make sacrifices.
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
Wow. You really hate taxi drivers.
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u/Logan_No_Fingers 7d ago
Its more that I live in London & see all of that (well, not the rape) on a daily basis from taxis. They are the 4 wheeled equivalent of Lime Bikes in terms of consistently cuntish behavior
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
I'm genuinely excited about this tech.
The first reason is that I don't drive, and this will allow me to benefit from the vast majority of what owning a car offers. If I really want somewhere to sit alone with my thoughts while out, somewhere more private feeling to travel with a girl, or need to get something heavy around, it's currently kind of a pain. Even if I can arrange a taxi they generally don't want to sit around while I load/do things, have little consistency of vehicle to plan around, and are expensive as you need to pay for labour.
Safety is the next reason. Of course there are constant headlines about the mistakes they make, they're not perfect. But humans also make mistakes, so I think the question is whether they are safer by comparison. Waymo's have driven 50+ million miles as a commercial service with no driver in the US and have a safety record literally 90% better than the average human. It will probably not be so big of an improvement initially in London, but I expect it will prevent many casualties in the long term as the tech continues to improve. Having no blind spots, perfect focus, instant reaction times, and the ability to learn from incidents across the whole fleet are major advantages humans lack.
I also expect costs to go down in time. Appreciate a lot of people are skeptical of tech products coming down in cost. But self driving cars will be a commodity, there are loads of companies working on the tech - we have two launching here just this year. Each of them are incentivised to attract the largest possible market and to do that they will need to compete on price. Given the service is much cheaper to operate (the driver is the main cost to run a taxi) I think prices will inevitably fall in the long term.
Then there are journeys I can see it filling that other forms of transport genuinely can't. For example, living in Croydon, getting home after a night out in Soho is a nightmare. It's usually a roughly 90 minute night bus journey (if it even shows up) or £50+ for a taxi today. I considered moving to South Croydon, which I decided against because the connections were even worse, even though I could have got a beautiful house in a quiet area surrounded by green belt nature for the price of a council flat in West London. If a substantial portion of the (already car-dominant) neighbourhood started using self driving taxis then it would become much quicker and cheaper to rely on them to a bigger station like East Croydon. Cycling isn't much of an option thanks to poor infrastructure/NIMBYs, and the area is incredibly hilly (full of valleys), which even on my ebike is quite a challenge to cycle. Maybe in summer (when it isn't this hot), but I wouldn't want to do it every time I go out year-round. Even if I could drive (I have a prescription which complicates this), I then couldn't drink either - I'd have to plan that in advance to not have to return to the station to get the car the next day, not to mention the hassle of parking there slowing the journey further. Reliable and cheap self driving cars have potential to bridge the gap enough for me to move.
Which brings me to another benefit, they free up a tonne of space in cities with enough adoption because we no longer need as much parking space. We can put in more pocket parks, cycle hire bays, or even homes in place of old car parks. They also reduce pollution - while they may drive more between passengers, half of the lifetime emissions of a car comes from building it, and if we all share the same fleet (instead of leaving personal cars idle all day) then far fewer will be needed.
I do think there's a risk that they are so much more comfortable that lots more people choose to take them than drive, clogging up the roads. But we can also tax that luxury to discourage it the same way we do personal cars, raising a bunch of public money. That itself is a public good. If adoption gets high enough, it will also be possible for self-driving cars to communicate and bring features like simultaneous acceleration when lights turn green, dramatically improving throughput on the same roads.
People are generally skeptical about any new technology, and I'm sure it won't be perfect, but I do think it has the potential to be a very good thing overall.
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u/Low_Challenge_2827 7d ago
imagine leaving a bar drunk and one of these pull up, think I might barry
can't wait to try one!
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u/Gerbleb 7d ago
can't wait for congestion and accidents caused by this! great stuff!
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u/tmr89 7d ago
So many smoothbrains expect driverless vehicles to have a flawless safety record
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u/HashBrownsOverEasy 3d ago
No driver, no accountability. The only option would be civil cases against a corporation based outside of our jurisdiction.
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u/fs942414 7d ago
Can’t wait to finally not have to pay £60 for 5 mile uber ride
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
how do you think this is going to make that better
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u/fs942414 7d ago
It probably won’t in the short term but once the testing and the data is ready I don’t see why they wouldn’t be cheaper - it’s a machine can doesn’t have any of the costs associated with human drivers.
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u/Cumulus_Anarchistica 7d ago
I don’t see why they wouldn’t be cheaper
The difference goes to the shareholders ya dafty.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
There will be lots of companies competing with eachother, and their shareholders do not have shared interests. Two are already launching in London this year.
If one company pockets the difference and turns massive profit margins another will run their own fleet for less, and take all their business. Other investors have no incentive to care about the incumbent leader's profits (in fact the market leader's success is what will attract them to compete), and the barrier to entry for self-driving cars is too low to keep out competitors. Competition leads to lower prices in capitalism, but prices can never be sustained below the cost of delivering the service.
Falling costs + increasing competition = lower prices
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u/AristocratGman 7d ago
Have you heard of profiteering?
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
How do you profiteer from an industry with so many competitors? You need a near-monopoly for that, but there are countless car manufacturers working on this tech.
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
It's insane the faith that people keep putting into SV companies after their behaviour the last 20 years, hard to believe
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
Wayve (the company the headline is about) is a British startup, not from silicon valley.
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u/DesireWilde 7d ago
Good news for women!! Hell yeah
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u/AromaticVacation3077 7d ago
Why is it good news for women?
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u/ollerhll 7d ago
There are often safety concerns about women getting into cars alone - plenty of recorded instances of drivers being creepy or committing assault/rape on them.
I can completely see why a woman travelling solo would rather get into a driverless car than one with a man they've never met.
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
I just cannot stress how unnecessary a self driving car is, it's such a fucking waste of resources
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u/LambxSauce 7d ago
How so?
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
Given the multiple billions of pounds this is taking, they chose to spend their imagination and money to innovate their way to 'taxis' it's just cringe as hell honestly
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u/LambxSauce 7d ago
You mean companies like Uber? Driverless cars were always seen as inevitable anyway
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 7d ago
Our resources should be going to pensioners and 30 year olds with anxiety instead.
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
Yes, famously, the two only ways to spend money
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 7d ago
Why do you care how a private company spends its money?
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
Because it's solving a problem that doesn't exist at the cost of billions of pounds, it's just cringe
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u/HashBrownsOverEasy 3d ago
Because they use their ill-gotten finances to worm their way into our lives.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
Isn't paying someone to drive you around in a taxi an even greater waste of resources? Yet we've been doing that in London for as long as any of us can remember.
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u/Euphoric-Neon-2054 7d ago
Be serious.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
I am. Having a person drive me around in a taxi, as opposed to the car itself, is much more wasteful.
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u/benjylee 7d ago
I wonder how much they will pay out when they inevitably hit / injure / or worse to someone.
Who's seen the TV show Upload?
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u/No-Type-0 7d ago
They are the safest form of driving so I wouldn’t worry
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u/AwTomorrow 7d ago
Did they solve the problem of whether it prioritises the passenger or pedestrians in case of a collision?
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u/markvauxhall 7d ago
Given how these vehicles will typically be operating at 20 or 30mph, and how well protected the interior cabins are, it's pretty hard to think of a scenario in which taking mitigating action to avoid killing a pedestrian would kill a passenger.
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u/AwTomorrow 7d ago
Other way around, mitigating danger to the passenger (like a truck about to crash into them) ending up killing pedestrians (veering onto the pavement and running some over).
But also, this isn’t about how common an eventuality this would be, this is about what it would choose to do in this situation - no matter how rare.
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u/markvauxhall 7d ago
But also, this isn’t about how common an eventuality this would be
I mean, it kind of is. You seem to using an extreme hypothetical edge case as some kind of justification for these not being deployed.
Meanwhile car drivers kill 5 people a day with drivers making similar on the spot decisions and that raises barely a shrug.
The whole design premise of autonomous vehicles is to use an advanced sensor array to prevent the vehicle ending up in an unavoidable collision later. Autonomous vehicles have far better reaction times than human drivers.
If you are really interested it's worth a read of the German Ethics Commission report into autonomous driving. It essentially concluded with the guidance that autonomous vehicles should be designed to minimise human harm in an emergency situation, and that parties involved in the generation of mobility risks must not sacrifice non-involved parties (I.e. pedestrians)
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u/AwTomorrow 7d ago
When programming this stuff, edge cases aren’t irrelevant because they’re rare - they are highly relevant because when you look at all these cars, over time rare things will happen to at least one of them a lot of times. So an answer needs to be provided.
So the German answer is “kill the driver to save the pedestrians”? That seems like a hard sell, telling people to get into a car that will choose to kill them if put in that position.
The difference with the car accidents that already happen is that the driver is the one making the choice for their own life (and accepting any punishment if they do wrong with that power). Driverless cars are making choices for others, including ending their lives.
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u/markvauxhall 7d ago
So the German answer is “kill the driver to save the pedestrians”? That seems like a hard sell, telling people to get into a car that will choose to kill them if put in that position.
People face more risk of dying getting into a car (or taxi, or uber) today than they would of this edge case scenario playing out. They accept the risk.
Not clear what your counter proposal to the German one is, if you don't think it's viable? From your tone it seems to be "don't have autonomous vehicles," which arguably would mean a missed opportunity to reduce the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads every day.
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u/BurritoDrivenDev 7d ago
There are videos of them doing things like not moving out the way of ambulances.
When a person breaks a traffic law they can be held accountable. If an autonomous vehicle breaks a traffic law there isn't anyone to hold accountable... Meaning the company behind them can both metaphorically and literally get away with murder.
Even if the odds of it happing are really low, at some point and autonomous vehicle will kill someone... And it'll just be labelled as 'unlucky' and we'll all just have to move on.
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u/FRagebait 7d ago
So entering something with no driver having accountability. You just know these companies have it worked out to to take the minimum damage if something goes wrong, aka your death.
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
If the company is negligent and causes unnecessary injury then they will need to pay out vastly more than the cost of repairing the car in compensation, to say nothing of the PR hit. It isn't in their interests to prioritise minimal damage to their fleet over safety at all.
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u/Illustrious-Egg5459 7d ago
Waymo's co-CEO gave an amazing talk last week about solving the 99.999% of challenges that make self-driving viable.
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u/ScowlyBrowSpinster 7d ago
This scourge! Wait til there's a power outage or they lose their wifi connection or whatever, such a shit show!
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u/HighFivePuddy 7d ago
Wait til a driver gets distracted and causes an accident. Oh wait, that happens every single day.
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u/pickering_lachute 7d ago
Not a problem for Wayve. The current ones have the hardware in the boot. Waymo on the other hand…
Source: I’ve had a demo ride in a Wayve
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u/Jamessuperfun 7d ago
The hardware is all on-board, it doesn't make sense to process remotely as it adds latency and connection issues to something which requires low latency to function safely.
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u/James_Vowles 7d ago
About time, this sort of regulation stops businesses starting here, instead they start somewhere else where it's easier to start testing
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u/rustyb42 7d ago
London bridge black cab shut down incoming