Heard about US cities stacked with self-driving cars? While the UK has been far more cautious about driverless car adoption so far, London is getting driver-free taxis next year.
This is according to an official announcement by one of the kings of the robo-road, Waymo.
London will be the first city in Europe to get Waymo’s robotaxis, which came to San Francisco all the way back in 2021.
To start at least, though, the Waymo vehicles will not be truly driverless. They will instead have a human overseer, a babysitter, to monitor what the vehicle is doing and take over if necessary.
The other good news for us mere bipedal Londoners, who tend to get by on public transport: Waymo’s tech on this front is actually pretty good.
You may have seen videos on social of Teslas doing dodgy stuff while on autopilot, but Waymo uses a more advanced and expensive navigation system. Where Tesla relies primarily on cameras, Waymo’s driverless cars use cameras, RADAR and LIDAR to get a better view on the surrounding environment.
And, yes, this is all taking place in co-operation with the UK government.
“Boosting the AV (autonomous vehicle) sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment and opportunities to the UK,” says Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.
“Cutting-edge investment like this will help us deliver our mission to be world leaders in new technology and spearhead national renewal.”
Are cabbies going to be ticked off? Absolutely, and we’ll have to see how this one plays out next year.
Without wanting to pour too much scorn on this potentially exciting-to-some techy development, a recent look into the cost and trip time of taxis in Los Angeles found Waymos take around twice as long to pick people up, according to JD Power. They are also significantly more expensive and take up to twice as long per average trip.
We don’t yet have an exact date for Waymo’s planned roll-out of driverless taxis, but you’re unlikely to miss the tech-adorned monsters on the roads once they arrive.
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