Londoners can now hail a self-driving minicab after Uber launched the UK’s first robotaxi service in partnership with British artificial intelligence firm Wayve.
The service begins with 15 autonomous vehicles licensed to operate in London, although each vehicle will have a human safety driver behind the wheel who can take over when necessary.
Unlike systems that rely on pre-programmed routes and responses, Wayve’s technology analyses sensor data in real time and makes driving decisions as situations develop.
Uber said a survey conducted through its London app received more than 100,000 responses from customers who indicated they would choose a self-driving taxi if one were available.
The company plans a gradual expansion of the service over several years.
Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility and delivery, said the company intends to maintain both human-driven and autonomous options for customers.
“We always want consumers to be able to request a human ride or an autonomous vehicle, and because the market’s growing, we expect that there will be human drivers on Uber London for a long time to come,” he said.
Wayve chief executive Alex Kendall described the partnership as “the space race for our generation,” while acknowledging that there were “really hard problems to solve” ahead.
“What we’ve done over time is pioneer a completely new approach to autonomous driving, making it possible to bring this to a busy and complex city like London and scale it globally,” he said.
The first British journalist to ride as a customer in a self-driving Uber reported a largely smooth journey through central London, although the vehicle required one intervention from its safety driver.
Following a 30-second safety briefing, the vehicle navigated traffic near a demonstration outside Parliament, roadworks and traffic lights, and correctly yielded when a cyclist waved it forward at a mini roundabout.
However, the vehicle encountered difficulty when the rear doors of a parked van appeared to swing open on a narrow side road. It braked sharply and triggered an internal alarm before the safety driver took control.
Wayve later said the intervention was the driver’s own decision and expressed confidence that its system would have handled the situation.
Earlier this year, the government and industry had suggested that fully driverless cars for hire could reach London by the end of 2026.
That timeline now appears unlikely.
The Department for Transport said it is working towards a framework that would allow self-driving cars on British roads in 2027, although it did not provide a specific date.
“These services will be introduced carefully, subject to rigorous safety testing and regulatory approval and will require local consent which can consider the potential impacts on local roads, jobs and communities,” the department said.
Christina Calderator, director of transport strategy and policy at Transport for London, said the organisation was “not holding up any decision” and was instead “taking time to get it right.”
She added: “This is something that’s new, it’s coming to London – we need to make sure it’s safe.”
David McMullen, senior organiser for the GMB union, urged caution unless people were “prepared to see unprecedented levels of social and economic disruption.”
He called on the government and TfL to develop a plan that “protects drivers,” describing any introduction of driverless services before then as “premature.”
Wayve is not the only company preparing to deploy autonomous vehicles on London’s roads.
Waymo has spent months mapping the city using staffed vehicles and says it does not intend to launch a service with a human behind the wheel. Chinese technology company Baidu is also positioning itself for a share of the market.
The competition comes as cities that adopted robotaxis earlier continue to generate mixed operational data, including differing crash rates among competing driverless fleets and evidence that a significant proportion of robotaxi journeys take place without passengers.
Some regulators have already gone further, approving paid rides in vehicles without steering wheels.
Europe is also considering how extensively autonomous vehicles should be permitted on its roads, making London’s launch a potential test case for the continent.
Experts say some of the biggest unresolved challenges involve human behaviour rather than the mechanics of autonomous driving.
Professor Siddartha Khastgir, head of safe autonomy at the University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group, highlighted situations in which human drivers sometimes break traffic rules for practical reasons.
“As human drivers we tend to make a very conscious decision of what we believe is right, and sometimes actually do things that are not perfectly legal – so for example, we tend to mount the kerb to give way to an ambulance,” he said. “So, how does a self-driving vehicle respond to emergency services? And what are the nuances of doing that in a crowded place like London?”
The accelerated pilot framework announced by transport officials last year projected tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds in economic value from autonomous driving.
For the technology to deliver those benefits, however, operators and regulators will still need to resolve how autonomous vehicles respond to the unpredictable situations that human drivers routinely encounter.
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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