Waymo is coming to London
Waymo has been active in key US cities for some time. Currently, it operates over 1,500 autonomous vehicles in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix and Atlanta – albeit it with varying degrees of scope and operational areas. The move to London will mark the first time Waymo has debuted in Europe.
The rollout will begin with a pilot scheme in the capital, where Moove already operates a vehicle financing and fleet business for ride-hailing drivers. Once off the ground, passengers will be able to summon driverless vehicles using the Waymo app. Waymo has said it is partnering with Jaguar Land Rover to fit the Waymo Driver autonomous platform into battery-electric I-PACEs.
The deployment of driverless cabs in London will certainly raise a number of challenges for Waymo. The company has said that it already operates “international engineering hubs” in London and Oxford “…which include teams advancing large-scale, closed loop simulation” for autonomous driving. Waymo co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana, said: “We’ve demonstrated how to responsible scale fully autonomous ride-hailing, and we can’t wait to expand the benefits of our technology to the United Kingdom.”
However, like other European cities, London’s road layout is highly irregular, combining narrow medieval roads with busy mixed-use intersections featuring cyclists, buses, black cabs, HGVs, pedestrians, and other cars. It’s undoubtedly more complicated than the American grid layouts most Waymo vehicles have been trained on. Despite this, James Gibson, Executive Director of Road Safety GB, doesn’t seem perturbed. In a comment, he said: “The data shows that the Waymo vehicles have performed far safer compared to human drivers across more than 100 million autonomous miles. Rolling out autonomous vehicles in a progressive yet measured way will be the best approach.”
There are also fears that the appearance of Waymo in the British capital could endanger London’s centuries-old black cab trade, which has already come under threat from the likes of Uber and other ridesharing apps. However, representatives of black cab drivers in London have dismissed this. Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, told the Guardian: “It’s a fairground ride… it’s a tourist attraction in San Francisco. 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 also told Sky News: “It’s a novelty, it is a gimmick. It is the solution that we don’t need. Who needs a driverless cab?”
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