11 ms·

Waymo is bringing autonomous, driverless ride-hailing to London in 2026

68 points by pykello 1y ago

ageitgey 1y ago
If they can operate in London, they will have really shown that autonomy is working. London is full of two-way roads that are only one car width wide, roads were you can just get stuck and have to fully back out, vehicles entirely blocking roads requiring complex cooperation between drivers to negotiate, etc. And that's not even considering the complex logic of figuring out where you can stop to let someone out.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > If they can operate in London, they will have really shown that autonomy is working Go back through Waymo’s historic announcements on HN. This is said every time. Autonomy works. Waymo has solved it. There isn’t yet a number 2, though China has strong candidates. But where you can find Waymo, it works so well that we need to see it in a familiar context to believe it really exists.
  - ifwinterco 1y ago
    All the existing places Waymo operate are in the US though, as OP says London is very different. Will be interesting to see if they can get it working or not
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      They've been operating in Tokyo for a bit now.
  - 4ndrewl 1y ago
    It's unclear as to where in London this is being rolled out, but central London traffic is notoriously slow, which may help. But we also don't have the concept of jaywalking - you can cross wherever, whenever and there is quite the cycling infrastructure to deal with.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > we also don't have the concept of jaywalking - you can cross wherever, whenever and there is quite the cycling infrastructure to deal with This is true in New York and, to a lesser degree, San Francisco.
      - tialaramex 1y ago
        I mean, it's now technically true (since some point in 2024) in NYC, but historically it was merely practice to not uniformly enforce this rule and that's basically a more extreme version of the reality across the US. However unlike a cop deciding whether to fine people for "jay walking" the Waymo doesn't care whether you're the mayor's grandmother or a wise-talking black teenager if you're in its path, those are both humans and it's not allowed to hit humans. There aren't going to be many humans in the street in outer Phoenix because where would they even be going? But the Mission, just like Leicester Square, has plenty of pedestrians who might just run into the street in front of you given any reason or opportunity and you need to be ready for that. So I agree this isn't novel for Waymo, but while technically jay walking is now legal in NYC that's not why Waymo (which also has pencilled in an NYC launch) needs to care about it already.
    - xnx 1y ago
      The linked article is bad. It would've been better to link to the official announcement or page (https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk): "select boroughs in London, including Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, City of Westminster, and the City of London."
      - verzali 1y ago
        That's a big area, covering much of the centre of the city. It will be impressive to see it working well.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Your comment is a slight of hand. Yes it "works" but it is an MVP. Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie that can follow the rules but doesn't have any of the predictive power that every driver who doesn't suck has some of. Like for example how traffic will often modulate its spacing or time its lane changes to reduce issues with merging or exiting traffic and certain intersections with most traffic doing the same thing become an efficient repetitive cycle, Waymo doesn't "get it". So it works, in the same way a newly licensed teenager "works". It's no cabbie. Edit: It's been over a year since I've ridden in one. Good to hear it's potentially better now.
    - sixhobbits 1y ago
      After taking both Uber and Waymo in San Francisco I think I disagree with this. Only caught a few so maybe I didn't see the bad sides, but from what I saw it was able to predict flows and navigate far more smoothly than humans in many situations. Really comfortable and overall safe feeling ride. It's different than human drivers for sure, but to me at least it's better. I agree with MVP part, my understanding is that there's still a lot of Wizard of Oz stuff in terms of regularly mapping and remapping its routes and having a lot of human operators remotely checking and maybe controlling the fleet, but I'm impressed personally.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie When did you last update this hypothesis? The Waymos I’ve been in creep, honk and modulate their aggressiveness quite naturally. In the cities they operate in, they’re a premium product to cabs. The part where you’re right is on freeways. But my point is that tends to be ignored when folks gatekeep “real” autonomy. Instead, it’s some random peculiarity of their city which humans traverse at low speeds. Exactly the thing Waymo has mastered.
    - minwcnt5 1y ago
      > People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    > This is said every time. Sure, but in terms of traffic difficulty they've done like level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and now they're jumping to 100! This is different. It's not the most difficult place to drive (good luck in India, Turkey, southern Italy, etc.), but it's still far more challenging than any American city. And it needs fundamentally new capabilities like being able to negotiate with other drivers visually and read implicit signals. You can't do it all just by following what the traffic lights say.
    - xnx 1y ago
      > it needs fundamentally new capabilities like being able to negotiate with other drivers visually and read implicit signal This is also important in the US and is a capability the Waymo Driver has. > it's still far more challenging than any American city. How would you rate the difficult of London vs. Boston?
      - eszed 1y ago
        I've driven extensively in both, and London's hands-down more challenging°. Boston drivers are significantly more aggressive, though, so Waymo might find the reverse. I dunno. —— °Which makes it more fun: I love driving in London, but I'm a weirdo. My biggest regret about my last / first visit to Delhi is that I let my wife talk me out of driving. It may indeed have been a prudent choice, but I think I was there long enough to "get" enough to manage next time.
- leprechaun1066 1y ago
  Wayve have been working on London streets for some time now. This is from a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ
- mavhc 1y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHLbuN6R6qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHLbuN6R6qg Tesla's video of FSD in London for comparison
- finolex1 1y ago
  Residents of every city claim that they have the craziest drivers or toughest streets to navigate in. London isn't really that materially harder to drive in than San Francisco.
  - ageitgey 1y ago
    Sure, people always claim "drivers in MY city..." But I've lived in both places and London is very different than SF. I'd say the UK has better drivers on average (and much more strict licensing requirements), but driving in London is much more challenging due to the tiny roads you have to navigate. There is no road in SF that is as hard to navigate as the average suburban London two-way traffic single car width road with parking on both sides. An I'm not saying London is "the worst" by any means. It's nothing like driving in Vietnam or India. But it is very different to SF.
    - tim333 1y ago
      Driving in London is kind of weird these days in that you feel almost stationary. It's typically wait at lights for 2 min, drive at 15-20 mph for 40 seconds, repeat. I've mostly given up on it and use an ebike instead.
    - eszed 1y ago
      Lived (and driven) both cities. 100% agree with you.
    - Gigachad 1y ago
      In some sense I think the "harder" roads might actually be easier since they just result in everyone moving slower and maybe worst case it gets stuck and requires manual control. While on "easier" roads when something goes wrong people are immediately killed.
    - minwcnt5 1y ago
      > There is no road in SF that is as hard to navigate as the average suburban London two-way traffic single car width road with parking on both sides. I think you just described the entire Bernal Heights neighborhood in SF (except with 20+ degree steepness on top of that).
- freetinker 1y ago
  Waymo solved San Francisco. Non-trivial, imo. Is London more complex?
nowaymo6237 1y ago
Unoccupied driverless vehicles need taxed. In the same way you have HOV lanes, the inverse should pay.
- Reubend 1y ago
  What on Earth will you use as a justification for that? We pay taxes for roads, for fuel, and for the cars themselves. The last thing we need is more.
  - pastage 1y ago
    One argument would be that a driver in a cab will pay tax, a robot taxi will pay a lot less. That is quite a lot of money that is funneled to private companies instead of being used to improve our infrastructure.
    - xnx 1y ago
      Should we put 2 drivers in each cab so that more taxes will be paid?
  - throawayonthe 1y ago
    roads are functionally subsidized by non-motorists
    - Reubend 1y ago
      But non-motorists still benefit from roads.
- denysvitali 1y ago
  Quite the opposite IMHO. This helps reduce people who would hypothetically drunk drive on a Saturday evening, which in turn decreases the possibility that someone dies because of that (either the driver or a victim that was just passing / driving by). Tbh, the sooner we remove the human from the equation, the better. It's scary to think that we allow so many careless people to drive vehicles that can kill people. I'm not talking just about drunk driving, but all the sort of distractions (smartphone, looking somewhere else, ...). London specifically, AFAIK after midnight has no tube service. This means that Waymo (or whoever takes a similar initiative) actually helps towards creating a public transportation service that is cheaper and even safer than the current one. I'm personally all up for it - don't tax innovation!
m101 1y ago
I would love to see this navigating central London on a Saturday night. It is a mind draining nightmare. Also, the small streets which are one car wide, and where one often needs to look far ahead to see whether there's a gap for you to sneak into whilst letting other cars by, will also be good to see handled.
IshKebab 1y ago
Wow I thought this would take at least another decade, given how difficult driving in London is compared to American cities. I will still be really surprised if they can actually make this work When I visited San Francisco recently the Waymos were really awesome and worked well, but also there's barely any traffic compared to London. The streets are all really wide and you can pretty much just pull over anywhere. Some even just stopped in the middle of the road and I was amazed to see people waiting patiently behind them! London is entirely different. Still, props for trying. Will be very interesting to watch what happens!
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  Waymo is coming to DC and London. I assume they'll also be targeting centers of political power throughout the rest of the world. Starting on the West Coast made sense as a technical strategy, but the huge disadvantage is that nationa legislators and regulators don't go there enough. So lots of people can blithely assume that self-driving taxis are a decade away, or that Elon Musk is going to solve it. That's a dangerous business problem. Waymos don't seem possible til you've ridden a few of them, and then they're ordinary.
- ghc 1y ago
  Even in America they've just chosen the easier cities. I would love it if Waymo came to Boston but until it learns to proactively break traffic laws like all the uber drivers I'm not sure it's going to be very competitive :/.
  - xnx 1y ago
    > I'm not sure it's going to be very competitive Uber may be faster by driving dangerously, but Waymo has advantages in safety, privacy, cleanliness, no tipping, etc.
    - ghc 1y ago
      I mean, some drivers do drive dangerously, but that's not what I'm talking about. With the narrow network of one way roads, going down an alley or going the wrong way down an empty one way road for 20 feet can sometimes make a 15 to 30 minute difference in trip time. And in traffic, it can be hard to get across some intersections unless you block the intersection. None of these is dangerous behaviors, per se, but they can be difference makers for riders.
asah 1y ago
note: Waymo typically spends 8-12+ months with safety drivers, before they launch true driverless.
Simulacra 1y ago
I keep wondering how far out this technology will be before it becomes stable and measurably successful; nobody dies Then what? How soon until trucks, ships, etc are now autonomous?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > before it becomes stable and measurably successful; nobody dies It’s already there for non-freeway driving. (Nobody dying is a perfectionist metric. It’s better than humans.) What’s limiting it are capital costs. Once Waymo finds a non-Jaguar form factor it can mass manufacture, I imagine this would get rolled out rapidly. (To the extent Tesla has a shot, it’s in its mass manufacturing expertise.)
  - michaelt 1y ago
    Maybe - but Google's sitting on $400 billion of assets. Would they delay their rollout over the capital costs of a few thousand $60,000 Jaguars? Granted, Chinese EVs can be half the price, and there isn't any competition at Google's heels, forcing them to rush. But still.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > Would they delay their rollout over the capital costs of a few thousand $60,000 Jaguars? Yes. Google, better than many others, gets scaling economics. (And the cost is likely $100+ thousand per vehicle, after sensors and compute, with costs rising rapidly if you try and order too many too fast due to supply-chain bottlenecks nobody has bothered optimizing yet.)
      - michaelt 1y ago
        Surely they need the same sensors and compute no matter what car they attach them to - they're either strapping $75k of sensors to a $60k luxury EV, or a $30k economy EV. Unless they're planning 20mph golf carts to save on long-distance sensors, which as far as I know they aren't. IMHO it's more likely they have capacity constraints because of all the different parts involved in a roll-out; you can't just double the capacity of a production facility without hiring lots of inexperienced new hires, meaning they can only build the things so fast. You can't roll out to a new city without places to park the cars, and places to charge them, and people to repair them, and places to store the spare parts, and trade routes to replenish the spare parts, and so on.
josefritzishere 1y ago
Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes for Waymo to kill someone?
- xnx 1y ago
  As in clearly Waymo's fault in a situation that most human drivers would no have killed someone? 10 years. Waymo vehicles have been involved in fatal accidents, but had no fault in them.
nemo44x 1y ago
I’ve been to London a lot over the years and I’ve noticed black cabs have changed the last couple years. It used to always be a native Londoner who passed the knowledge and got access to driving black cab. But recently I’ve had some black cabs with immigrants - this would never be the case historically. So I think they all see the writing on the wall here.
- mschild 1y ago
  Or, like a lot of trade jobs, it simply isn't attractive to a lot of native folks because of the pay and working hours.
  - nemo44x 1y ago
    Well it was a really hard job to get for decades. Had to know the right people. Was lucrative.
- hiddencost 1y ago
  Racism
- badgersnake 1y ago
  > passed the knowledge That is still the criteria.
  - nemo44x 1y ago
    I think they’ve really let up on it recently. Have had a few rides where the driver was clueless and had to punch it into a GPS. Never happened to me previously.
    - badgersnake 1y ago
      If you think the driver is not who they are supposed to be, complain to the carriage office.
- maroon_unperson 1y ago
spacedgrey 1y ago
How do autonomous driverless cars handle the stand off that occurs when two cars meet on a narrow London street and both parties are of the opinion that the other has to back up 50 meters to let them through? Will the car instruct the passenger to get out and do the arm waving and swearing required for the right of way negotiation?
- michelsedgh 1y ago
  In Los Angeles, it handles it very badly in my experience.
  - whiplash451 1y ago
    Robo-taxis can decide not to travel through these roads (or to only do it under absolute necessity) I'm also curious to know if Waymo's are allowed to drop you slightly off from the address you specified -- in which case they can drop you at the next corner.
    - Thorrez 1y ago
      >I'm also curious to know if Waymo's are allowed to drop you slightly off from the address you specified -- in which case they can drop you at the next corner. Yes, they do. >Tell us where you want to go >Choose your destination and we’ll select the safest spots to pick you up and drop you off. https://waymo.com/rides/ https://waymo.com/rides/
    - michelsedgh 1y ago
      Yes but thats a hack, the issue that it can’t handle those situations is still there and in my experience the car behind me was a waymo that kept trying to center but as soon as it saw cars coming it swerved. It kept going left and right. Unsafe in that situation and scared for people who were coming its way.
    - n4r9 1y ago
      I live in London and have visited and driven in LA. London has more narrow streets. Many, many more.
xnx 1y ago
Official page with more detail: https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk
Yizahi 1y ago
Perfect, this is exactly what an overcrowded ancient megapolis needs - more cars permanently on the roads.
- morcus 1y ago
  But at least, fewer cars needlessly taking up valuable real estate for parking in high density areas.
  - Yizahi 1y ago
    The only people who can afford daily taxi, twice a day, are already rich. Those are the people who can afford any private car parking price near the office, or most likely will have a spot reserved included in their high paying job. I do agree that this fleet will slightly alleviate parking issue for people sporadically taking cars, not regularly. But at the cost of more congestion on the roads, especially in the already congested city centers, since that will be overwhelming majority of trip start or end points.
    - roryirvine 1y ago
      Approximately no-one will use it in that way in London. Travelling by car is almost always slower than public transport, usually substantially so. Just about everyone who commutes from zone 2-5 into central London will be better served by continuing to use the bus, tube, overground, tram, light rail, and national rail systems just as they do now. The only exceptions will be people with specific mobility needs (usually requiring an adapted vehicle), security requirements (senior govt ministers, royalty, foreign dignitaries of one sort or another), or who need their vehicle for work. None of those groups will be well-served by Waymo, so they'll continue to have to put up with using private vehicles. Where it will be useful is for one-off journeys. Coming home after a night out, especially if it's in the wee hours when you might otherwise have to wait 20 minutes for public transport. Going to/from hospital. Getting to the airport with luggage for an early flight. Going clubbing when you're not wearing very much and it's raining heavily outside. There are plenty of situations like that when people are happy to pay £20 more and put up with a longer journey, but for most people it'll be a few times a month rather than a daily occurrence.
librasteve 1y ago
If they can operate in San Francisco, eg North Beach, they can operate in London. Likely they will just avoid narrow roads for a while. But I was very impressed in SF to see that Waymos are quite pushy to enter / cross traffic.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Official blog post rather than the sparse marketing page: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/hello-london-your-waymo-ride-is-arriving https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/hello-london-your-waymo-ride-...
motbus3 1y ago
They might so as they did elsewhere like choose few streets and saying they operate driverless in London just for show. I don't think one can take their word until it is done.

68 points by pykello 1y ago

If they can operate in London, they will have really shown that autonomy is working. London is full of two-way roads that are only one car width wide, roads were you can just get stuck and have to fully back out, vehicles entirely blocking roads requiring complex cooperation between drivers to negotiate, etc. And that's not even considering the complex logic of figuring out where you can stop to let someone out.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> If they can operate in London, they will have really shown that autonomy is working Go back through Waymo’s historic announcements on HN. This is said every time. Autonomy works. Waymo has solved it. There isn’t yet a number 2, though China has strong candidates. But where you can find Waymo, it works so well that we need to see it in a familiar context to believe it really exists.
- ifwinterco 1y ago
  All the existing places Waymo operate are in the US though, as OP says London is very different. Will be interesting to see if they can get it working or not
  - AlotOfReading 1y ago
    They've been operating in Tokyo for a bit now.
- 4ndrewl 1y ago
  It's unclear as to where in London this is being rolled out, but central London traffic is notoriously slow, which may help. But we also don't have the concept of jaywalking - you can cross wherever, whenever and there is quite the cycling infrastructure to deal with.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > we also don't have the concept of jaywalking - you can cross wherever, whenever and there is quite the cycling infrastructure to deal with This is true in New York and, to a lesser degree, San Francisco.
    - tialaramex 1y ago
      I mean, it's now technically true (since some point in 2024) in NYC, but historically it was merely practice to not uniformly enforce this rule and that's basically a more extreme version of the reality across the US. However unlike a cop deciding whether to fine people for "jay walking" the Waymo doesn't care whether you're the mayor's grandmother or a wise-talking black teenager if you're in its path, those are both humans and it's not allowed to hit humans. There aren't going to be many humans in the street in outer Phoenix because where would they even be going? But the Mission, just like Leicester Square, has plenty of pedestrians who might just run into the street in front of you given any reason or opportunity and you need to be ready for that. So I agree this isn't novel for Waymo, but while technically jay walking is now legal in NYC that's not why Waymo (which also has pencilled in an NYC launch) needs to care about it already.
  - xnx 1y ago
    The linked article is bad. It would've been better to link to the official announcement or page (https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk): "select boroughs in London, including Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Camden, Ealing, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, City of Westminster, and the City of London."
    - verzali 1y ago
      That's a big area, covering much of the centre of the city. It will be impressive to see it working well.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Your comment is a slight of hand. Yes it "works" but it is an MVP. Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie that can follow the rules but doesn't have any of the predictive power that every driver who doesn't suck has some of. Like for example how traffic will often modulate its spacing or time its lane changes to reduce issues with merging or exiting traffic and certain intersections with most traffic doing the same thing become an efficient repetitive cycle, Waymo doesn't "get it". So it works, in the same way a newly licensed teenager "works". It's no cabbie. Edit: It's been over a year since I've ridden in one. Good to hear it's potentially better now.
  - sixhobbits 1y ago
    After taking both Uber and Waymo in San Francisco I think I disagree with this. Only caught a few so maybe I didn't see the bad sides, but from what I saw it was able to predict flows and navigate far more smoothly than humans in many situations. Really comfortable and overall safe feeling ride. It's different than human drivers for sure, but to me at least it's better. I agree with MVP part, my understanding is that there's still a lot of Wizard of Oz stuff in terms of regularly mapping and remapping its routes and having a lot of human operators remotely checking and maybe controlling the fleet, but I'm impressed personally.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Everywhere it's rolled out people say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie When did you last update this hypothesis? The Waymos I’ve been in creep, honk and modulate their aggressiveness quite naturally. In the cities they operate in, they’re a premium product to cabs. The part where you’re right is on freeways. But my point is that tends to be ignored when folks gatekeep “real” autonomy. Instead, it’s some random peculiarity of their city which humans traverse at low speeds. Exactly the thing Waymo has mastered.
  - minwcnt5 1y ago
    > People say yes it drives, but it drives like a rookie I think you just made this up. Almost every anecdote I've heard, and I spend a lot of time in two cities where it's launched, is that "it drives better than most humans". Which is exactly how I would characterize it too. It doesn't drive exactly like a human. But for every subtle human behavior it doesn't do, there are probably several things it does much more skillfully than a human.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  > This is said every time. Sure, but in terms of traffic difficulty they've done like level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and now they're jumping to 100! This is different. It's not the most difficult place to drive (good luck in India, Turkey, southern Italy, etc.), but it's still far more challenging than any American city. And it needs fundamentally new capabilities like being able to negotiate with other drivers visually and read implicit signals. You can't do it all just by following what the traffic lights say.
  - xnx 1y ago
    > it needs fundamentally new capabilities like being able to negotiate with other drivers visually and read implicit signal This is also important in the US and is a capability the Waymo Driver has. > it's still far more challenging than any American city. How would you rate the difficult of London vs. Boston?
    - eszed 1y ago
      I've driven extensively in both, and London's hands-down more challenging°. Boston drivers are significantly more aggressive, though, so Waymo might find the reverse. I dunno. —— °Which makes it more fun: I love driving in London, but I'm a weirdo. My biggest regret about my last / first visit to Delhi is that I let my wife talk me out of driving. It may indeed have been a prudent choice, but I think I was there long enough to "get" enough to manage next time.
leprechaun1066 1y ago
Wayve have been working on London streets for some time now. This is from a few months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvctCbVEvwQ
mavhc 1y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHLbuN6R6qg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHLbuN6R6qg Tesla's video of FSD in London for comparison
finolex1 1y ago
Residents of every city claim that they have the craziest drivers or toughest streets to navigate in. London isn't really that materially harder to drive in than San Francisco.
- ageitgey 1y ago
  Sure, people always claim "drivers in MY city..." But I've lived in both places and London is very different than SF. I'd say the UK has better drivers on average (and much more strict licensing requirements), but driving in London is much more challenging due to the tiny roads you have to navigate. There is no road in SF that is as hard to navigate as the average suburban London two-way traffic single car width road with parking on both sides. An I'm not saying London is "the worst" by any means. It's nothing like driving in Vietnam or India. But it is very different to SF.
  - tim333 1y ago
    Driving in London is kind of weird these days in that you feel almost stationary. It's typically wait at lights for 2 min, drive at 15-20 mph for 40 seconds, repeat. I've mostly given up on it and use an ebike instead.
  - eszed 1y ago
    Lived (and driven) both cities. 100% agree with you.
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    In some sense I think the "harder" roads might actually be easier since they just result in everyone moving slower and maybe worst case it gets stuck and requires manual control. While on "easier" roads when something goes wrong people are immediately killed.
  - minwcnt5 1y ago
    > There is no road in SF that is as hard to navigate as the average suburban London two-way traffic single car width road with parking on both sides. I think you just described the entire Bernal Heights neighborhood in SF (except with 20+ degree steepness on top of that).
freetinker 1y ago
Waymo solved San Francisco. Non-trivial, imo. Is London more complex?

nowaymo6237 1y ago

Unoccupied driverless vehicles need taxed. In the same way you have HOV lanes, the inverse should pay.

Reubend 1y ago
What on Earth will you use as a justification for that? We pay taxes for roads, for fuel, and for the cars themselves. The last thing we need is more.
- pastage 1y ago
  One argument would be that a driver in a cab will pay tax, a robot taxi will pay a lot less. That is quite a lot of money that is funneled to private companies instead of being used to improve our infrastructure.
  - xnx 1y ago
    Should we put 2 drivers in each cab so that more taxes will be paid?
- throawayonthe 1y ago
  roads are functionally subsidized by non-motorists
  - Reubend 1y ago
    But non-motorists still benefit from roads.
denysvitali 1y ago
Quite the opposite IMHO. This helps reduce people who would hypothetically drunk drive on a Saturday evening, which in turn decreases the possibility that someone dies because of that (either the driver or a victim that was just passing / driving by). Tbh, the sooner we remove the human from the equation, the better. It's scary to think that we allow so many careless people to drive vehicles that can kill people. I'm not talking just about drunk driving, but all the sort of distractions (smartphone, looking somewhere else, ...). London specifically, AFAIK after midnight has no tube service. This means that Waymo (or whoever takes a similar initiative) actually helps towards creating a public transportation service that is cheaper and even safer than the current one. I'm personally all up for it - don't tax innovation!

m101 1y ago

I would love to see this navigating central London on a Saturday night. It is a mind draining nightmare. Also, the small streets which are one car wide, and where one often needs to look far ahead to see whether there's a gap for you to sneak into whilst letting other cars by, will also be good to see handled.

IshKebab 1y ago

Wow I thought this would take at least another decade, given how difficult driving in London is compared to American cities. I will still be really surprised if they can actually make this work When I visited San Francisco recently the Waymos were really awesome and worked well, but also there's barely any traffic compared to London. The streets are all really wide and you can pretty much just pull over anywhere. Some even just stopped in the middle of the road and I was amazed to see people waiting patiently behind them! London is entirely different. Still, props for trying. Will be very interesting to watch what happens!

matthewdgreen 1y ago
Waymo is coming to DC and London. I assume they'll also be targeting centers of political power throughout the rest of the world. Starting on the West Coast made sense as a technical strategy, but the huge disadvantage is that nationa legislators and regulators don't go there enough. So lots of people can blithely assume that self-driving taxis are a decade away, or that Elon Musk is going to solve it. That's a dangerous business problem. Waymos don't seem possible til you've ridden a few of them, and then they're ordinary.
ghc 1y ago
Even in America they've just chosen the easier cities. I would love it if Waymo came to Boston but until it learns to proactively break traffic laws like all the uber drivers I'm not sure it's going to be very competitive :/.
- xnx 1y ago
  > I'm not sure it's going to be very competitive Uber may be faster by driving dangerously, but Waymo has advantages in safety, privacy, cleanliness, no tipping, etc.
  - ghc 1y ago
    I mean, some drivers do drive dangerously, but that's not what I'm talking about. With the narrow network of one way roads, going down an alley or going the wrong way down an empty one way road for 20 feet can sometimes make a 15 to 30 minute difference in trip time. And in traffic, it can be hard to get across some intersections unless you block the intersection. None of these is dangerous behaviors, per se, but they can be difference makers for riders.

asah 1y ago

note: Waymo typically spends 8-12+ months with safety drivers, before they launch true driverless.

Simulacra 1y ago

I keep wondering how far out this technology will be before it becomes stable and measurably successful; nobody dies Then what? How soon until trucks, ships, etc are now autonomous?

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> before it becomes stable and measurably successful; nobody dies It’s already there for non-freeway driving. (Nobody dying is a perfectionist metric. It’s better than humans.) What’s limiting it are capital costs. Once Waymo finds a non-Jaguar form factor it can mass manufacture, I imagine this would get rolled out rapidly. (To the extent Tesla has a shot, it’s in its mass manufacturing expertise.)
- michaelt 1y ago
  Maybe - but Google's sitting on $400 billion of assets. Would they delay their rollout over the capital costs of a few thousand $60,000 Jaguars? Granted, Chinese EVs can be half the price, and there isn't any competition at Google's heels, forcing them to rush. But still.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Would they delay their rollout over the capital costs of a few thousand $60,000 Jaguars? Yes. Google, better than many others, gets scaling economics. (And the cost is likely $100+ thousand per vehicle, after sensors and compute, with costs rising rapidly if you try and order too many too fast due to supply-chain bottlenecks nobody has bothered optimizing yet.)
    - michaelt 1y ago
      Surely they need the same sensors and compute no matter what car they attach them to - they're either strapping $75k of sensors to a $60k luxury EV, or a $30k economy EV. Unless they're planning 20mph golf carts to save on long-distance sensors, which as far as I know they aren't. IMHO it's more likely they have capacity constraints because of all the different parts involved in a roll-out; you can't just double the capacity of a production facility without hiring lots of inexperienced new hires, meaning they can only build the things so fast. You can't roll out to a new city without places to park the cars, and places to charge them, and people to repair them, and places to store the spare parts, and trade routes to replenish the spare parts, and so on.

josefritzishere 1y ago

Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes for Waymo to kill someone?

xnx 1y ago
As in clearly Waymo's fault in a situation that most human drivers would no have killed someone? 10 years. Waymo vehicles have been involved in fatal accidents, but had no fault in them.

nemo44x 1y ago

I’ve been to London a lot over the years and I’ve noticed black cabs have changed the last couple years. It used to always be a native Londoner who passed the knowledge and got access to driving black cab. But recently I’ve had some black cabs with immigrants - this would never be the case historically. So I think they all see the writing on the wall here.

mschild 1y ago
Or, like a lot of trade jobs, it simply isn't attractive to a lot of native folks because of the pay and working hours.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  Well it was a really hard job to get for decades. Had to know the right people. Was lucrative.
hiddencost 1y ago
Racism
badgersnake 1y ago
> passed the knowledge That is still the criteria.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  I think they’ve really let up on it recently. Have had a few rides where the driver was clueless and had to punch it into a GPS. Never happened to me previously.
  - badgersnake 1y ago
    If you think the driver is not who they are supposed to be, complain to the carriage office.
maroon_unperson 1y ago

spacedgrey 1y ago

How do autonomous driverless cars handle the stand off that occurs when two cars meet on a narrow London street and both parties are of the opinion that the other has to back up 50 meters to let them through? Will the car instruct the passenger to get out and do the arm waving and swearing required for the right of way negotiation?

michelsedgh 1y ago
In Los Angeles, it handles it very badly in my experience.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  Robo-taxis can decide not to travel through these roads (or to only do it under absolute necessity) I'm also curious to know if Waymo's are allowed to drop you slightly off from the address you specified -- in which case they can drop you at the next corner.
  - Thorrez 1y ago
    >I'm also curious to know if Waymo's are allowed to drop you slightly off from the address you specified -- in which case they can drop you at the next corner. Yes, they do. >Tell us where you want to go >Choose your destination and we’ll select the safest spots to pick you up and drop you off. https://waymo.com/rides/ https://waymo.com/rides/
  - michelsedgh 1y ago
    Yes but thats a hack, the issue that it can’t handle those situations is still there and in my experience the car behind me was a waymo that kept trying to center but as soon as it saw cars coming it swerved. It kept going left and right. Unsafe in that situation and scared for people who were coming its way.
  - n4r9 1y ago
    I live in London and have visited and driven in LA. London has more narrow streets. Many, many more.

xnx 1y ago

Official page with more detail: https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk

Yizahi 1y ago

Perfect, this is exactly what an overcrowded ancient megapolis needs - more cars permanently on the roads.

morcus 1y ago
But at least, fewer cars needlessly taking up valuable real estate for parking in high density areas.
- Yizahi 1y ago
  The only people who can afford daily taxi, twice a day, are already rich. Those are the people who can afford any private car parking price near the office, or most likely will have a spot reserved included in their high paying job. I do agree that this fleet will slightly alleviate parking issue for people sporadically taking cars, not regularly. But at the cost of more congestion on the roads, especially in the already congested city centers, since that will be overwhelming majority of trip start or end points.
  - roryirvine 1y ago
    Approximately no-one will use it in that way in London. Travelling by car is almost always slower than public transport, usually substantially so. Just about everyone who commutes from zone 2-5 into central London will be better served by continuing to use the bus, tube, overground, tram, light rail, and national rail systems just as they do now. The only exceptions will be people with specific mobility needs (usually requiring an adapted vehicle), security requirements (senior govt ministers, royalty, foreign dignitaries of one sort or another), or who need their vehicle for work. None of those groups will be well-served by Waymo, so they'll continue to have to put up with using private vehicles. Where it will be useful is for one-off journeys. Coming home after a night out, especially if it's in the wee hours when you might otherwise have to wait 20 minutes for public transport. Going to/from hospital. Getting to the airport with luggage for an early flight. Going clubbing when you're not wearing very much and it's raining heavily outside. There are plenty of situations like that when people are happy to pay £20 more and put up with a longer journey, but for most people it'll be a few times a month rather than a daily occurrence.

librasteve 1y ago

If they can operate in San Francisco, eg North Beach, they can operate in London. Likely they will just avoid narrow roads for a while. But I was very impressed in SF to see that Waymos are quite pushy to enter / cross traffic.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

Official blog post rather than the sparse marketing page: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/hello-london-your-waymo-ride-is-arriving https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/hello-london-your-waymo-ride-...

motbus3 1y ago

They might so as they did elsewhere like choose few streets and saying they operate driverless in London just for show. I don't think one can take their word until it is done.