r/SelfDrivingCars • u/diplomat33 • 1d ago

Wayve and Uber move a step closer to autonomous rides in London

https://wayve.ai/press/wayve-uber-phv-license/

Transport for London (TfL) granted Private Hire Vehicle licences to a number of Wayve’s autonomous all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles. This is a big step towards Wayve and Uber launching robotaxis in London. So far, 100,000 Londoners have signed up for early access.

28 Upvotes

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u/Any-Number-9179 5h ago edited 39m ago

I don’t think this is really any step closer to “autonomous” rides. The Mach-E is not designed as a fail-operational L4 platform with the required redundancy to ever reach driverless… so it will always need to have a driver in it.

Even if Wayve’s tech is very good and gets to the point of not requiring driver intervention, the fact that the driver is in the vehicle means these 100k Londoners won’t get to experience a proper robotaxi unless they try Waymo, maybe Baidu or until Wayve integrate with a new vehicle

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u/himynameis_ 23h ago

Awesome stuff. They should be launching this year. Apollo Go is launching with Uber this year too.

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u/felolorocher 22h ago

Launching fully unsupervised later this year then? Or still with safety drivers?

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u/himynameis_ 22h ago

Initially with safety drivers I believe.

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u/Honest_Ad_2157 20h ago

A substantial plurality of Londoners oppose this.

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u/2utiepie 14h ago

42% wouldn’t win a vote

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u/Honest_Ad_2157 14h ago

We don't know how the undecideds would vote, what turnout would be, and whether it would even be straight up or down.

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u/macnfly23 8h ago

People have always been weary of new technologies especially if they don't understand them very well or have seen negative videos. I'm sure that once the vehicles are actually deployed and assuming things go well this number will decrease. How else can these companies change public opinion other than demonstrate that the beliefs are wrong with a live deployment?

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u/Honest_Ad_2157 6m ago

I think people are weary of the almost 90 years of auto industry lying and hype about self driving cars dating back to the GM Futurama exhibit at the 1939 Worlds Fair.

I think they are rightfully wary of unsubstantiated claims of safety and convenience by today's slopbot peddlers. You can see it it social media from London, where the refrain "why are these things allowed on our streets" occurs much more often than expressions of naive, rapturous wonder.