By Mauro Orru
Uber Technologies and self-driving car startup Wayve Technologies agreed to launch public-road trials of fully autonomous vehicles in London as the ride-hailing giant ramps up plans to bring self-driving cars to the streets of Europe.
The companies said they had chosen the U.K. capital because of its significantly different road layouts and traffic laws compared to U.S. locations, where most testing has been conducted so far. A more complex driving environment will allow the companies to better develop the technology needed to deploy self-driving cars at scale, they said.
Uber gave up on costly plans to develop its own driverless taxis years ago when it sold its self-driving-car unit to a Silicon Valley competitor, Aurora Innovation. However, the group has since then recalibrated its efforts, resorting to partnerships with other companies to provide the service.
The group struck several partnerships in recent months, covering Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities. Uber signed a deal with Waymo for customers in Austin and Atlanta to hail the company's driverless taxis through the Uber app.
Uber and London-based Wayve, which has raised more than $1 billion from investors like Japan's SoftBank Group, Nvidia and Microsoft, struck an agreement to incorporate Wayve's artificial-intelligence technology into Uber vehicles last year.
Wayve's so-called Embodied AI allows cars to interact with, comprehend and learn from human behavior in real-world environments, the company said, effectively equipping vehicles with a robot brain that can adapt to unexpected situations.
"Our vision is to make autonomy a safe and reliable option for riders everywhere, and this trial in London brings that future closer to reality," Uber's Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Macdonald, said in a statement.
Uber and Wayve didn't specify when trials in the U.K. would begin, saying they would share further details on the timeline and a potential auto partner in the coming months. Heidi Alexander, U.K. Secretary of State for Transportation, said the government was fast-tracking pilots of self-driving vehicles to next spring.
Trials for self-driving vehicles have been taking place in the U.K. since January 2015, but the new plans will allow companies to test small scale taxi- and bus-like services without a safety driver for the first time and make them available for people to book through an app on roads in England.
Uber and Wayve said they would work with the U.K. government and Transport for London on the permitting and regulatory approval process, adding that conducting tests in London would make it easier to deploy autonomous vehicles in key European markets.
Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
06-10-25 0632ET
