Pedestrians in London rule the asphalt. Bus breakdown? Fine. Tube strike? Better walk. Traffic lights? Suggestion only. There are no laws against jaywalking here because jaywalking is just what you do when you want to cross. It is chaotic. It is ancient. It is exactly why sending self-driving cars here sounds like a bad joke.
Waymo doesn’t see the joke. They plan to launch robotaxis on these streets this year.
“We’re treating London with the appropriate amount humility and respect.”
That was Saswat Panigrahi. Waymo’s chief product officer. He said it at SXSW. I believe he was being polite.
I spotted a Jaguar I-Pace rolling past. Slowly. It had a human driver inside. It always does for now. Waymo has 100 of these cars testing in the capital. They are watching. Learning. Trying not to hit a pub patron stepping out between two double-decker buses.
They aren’t alone. Wayve. A British AI startup. Valuable. Dangerous maybe. They are trialing tech on Uber. They want to launch this year too. Then Tokyo. Then the US.
Two different approaches. Same headache.
Waymo maps everything in 3D. Liars and sensors and lidar. Classical robotics. Precise. Rigid.
Wayve uses end-to-end neural nets. Deep learning. They feed it data. Lots of data. They let the AI drive. Both systems are entering a arena where the players refuse to follow the rules.
The Hardest Edge Cases
I have been in a Waymo before. San Francisco. I wanted tacos. The car wouldn’t stop. It circled the block three times. I sat there. Hungry. Fuming. Eventually it let me out.
London isn’t San Francisco. London isn’t a grid. It is a medieval maze. One-way systems twist around corners like spaghetti. If you miss a stop, you are stuck. You might have to drive for ten minutes to turn around. Ethan Teicher from Waymo admits it. He said it’s like SF’s Chinatown. But everywhere. Always.
Kaity Fischer from Wayve puts it worse. “The hardest edge cases.” She wasn’t exaggerating.
London has twenty times the construction work of SF. Ten times the vulnerable pedestrians. And the pedestrians don’t just walk in lanes. They step out. They wave. They ignore cars. It’s not just jaywalkers either. It’s the vibe. The city breathes differently.
Wayve is using London as a classroom. First market. They started testing in 2019. They learn here before they go anywhere else. If the car fails in London, it fails everywhere.
Waymo is newer here. Late last year. But they have twenty million rides of data from elsewhere. They think that helps. Probably.
Regulators Cheer. Cabbies Scowl
Why London? Easy answers. The UK government actually supports this.
The US has a patchwork of state laws. Messy. The UK has a national strategy. Clear. Fischer calls the government an “incredible support.” It makes launching easier. Waymo liked the vibe too. Global city. Tourists. Locals. Safety goals. Teicher said the tech helps achieve those goals.
London needs last-mile solutions. Waymo fits that hole in the transport network. They frame it as another option. Safe. Clean. Comfortable. Just add it to the pile.
The pile includes the Tube. Routemasters. And the black cabs.
Black cabs hate change. You know the test. The Knowledge. It takes two years to memorize 25,000 streets. They earned it. They fought Uber for years. They are watching Waymo with narrowed eyes.
The numbers tell the story of anxiety. In 2013 there were over 22,000 licensed cab drivers. In 2023 there are roughly 14,000. That’s a collapse.
I asked Teicher about the backlash. Would Waymo prepare for anger from these professionals?
He softened the edges. “Tremendous respect.” He said they aren’t replacements. Not soon anyway. He framed it as part of a broader ecosystem. A win-win.
Maybe. Or maybe not.
Teicher likes the competition from Wayve and Uber. Says it pushes everyone to be better. He smiles for the press.
The roads don’t care about your ecosystem. The pedestrian is stepping out. The car has to decide. Fast.
Will it know what to do?
