We’re taking the next step toward bringing fully autonomous ride-hailing to London this year with the start of autonomous driving with trained specialists behind the wheel.

Since we arrived, we’ve put the Waymo Driver through closed course testing, and a team of trained, local professionals have driven the vehicles across tens of thousands of miles on London roads. The early mileage provides a baseline of context for the Waymo Driver, and has enabled our team to train the Driver in a simulated London environment. This methodical approach ensures the Waymo Driver safely generalises to new environments. The data from 170 million fully autonomous miles driven in the U.S. shows the Waymo Driver was involved in 92% fewer crashes that cause serious or fatal injuries compared to human drivers where we operate. At our current scale of over 4 million fully autonomous miles driven every week, our analysis suggests the Waymo Driver is preventing approximately one serious-injury crash every 8 days.

We’re also further investing in our UK team, bringing world-class talent to advance the AI architecture that underpins the Waymo Driver, support our operations, expand our business in Europe, and strengthen relationships with emergency services. And we’re working with our operations partners to scale up our driving and establish multiple AV service centres across London, staffed by a growing fleet management workforce.

Londoners have told us they want to use Waymo to and from social engagements and nightlife, leisure activities, and the city’s airports. We’re looking forward to complementing London’s transport network with our convenient, reliable, fully-electric ride-hailing service, connecting Londoners to the Tube, bus, or their destination with a quiet space to catch up on emails, relax, or make a private call.

If you want to follow the latest updates from London and be among the first to ride, sign up at https://waymo.com/waymo-in-uk/.