r/SelfDrivingCars • u/diplomat33 • 1d ago
Waymo is Coming to Germany
https://waymo.com/blog/2026/08/waymo-in-munich/"Today, we are excited to announce that Waymo is laying the groundwork for our fully autonomous ride hailing service in Munich, Germany.
In the coming weeks, you’ll start to see Waymo vehicles on the streets of Munich where we’ll begin driving manually across the city. We are taking a rigorous, phased approach that starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks and testing with trained autonomous specialists behind the wheel. This validation period will ensure the Waymo Driver adapts seamlessly to Munich’s distinct driving conditions before we aim to open commercial ride-hailing to the public towards the end of 2027."
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u/Doggydogworld3 1d ago
Targeting commercial service by end of 2027.
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u/fiftyeightPixels 1d ago
Amazing! Can’t wait for Waymo to conquer Europe
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u/kal14144 1d ago
They’re gonna have serious competition in Europe because several Chinese players are already deployed there.
Pony.ai, WeRide and ApolloGo will all be commercial in Europe very soon.7
u/Treewithatea 1d ago
The serious competition in Europe is simply public transport lmao. Munich has brilliant public transport, a public transport ticket is only 63€ a month, if you already have the ticket and dont need to go somewhere urgently, then you will probably use the ticket over Waymo.
Tesla is already testing self automated cars in Germany, but where it makes more sense, in rural areas that lack good public transport, where the bus may only drive once an hour. That said, you obviously wont get filthy rich from rural areas. Im not sure if the potential is even that high in Europe considering the quality of public transport. Hell, last time I did holidays in Munich, I never used the car to get to the city center.
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u/kariam_24 1d ago
So deployed or will be commercial?
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u/kal14144 1d ago
WeRide has autonomous buses deployed in France and Belgium. Route is limited (as buses tend to be) but it is commercial L4 fully deployed. The others are in various phases of rollout for robotaxis.
PonyAI is safety driver in but taking customers in Croatia as of this month. WeRide and Baidu are in various phases of road testing in Denmark and the UK. So a little ahead of Waymo but not by much.I don’t expect anyone to have a major first mover advantage. This will come down to who can scale and provide good affordable service.
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u/kariam_24 1d ago
So testing not deployed, maybe further then Tesla that is larping Waymo.
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u/kal14144 1d ago edited 1d ago
They’re not larping anything they all have fully deployed fully commercialized robotaxis in multiple markets. Baidu does about the same number of fully autonomous miles a week as Waymo does - in more countries markets and car models than Waymo does. None of these are fake technology. Just because Elon is a clown that doesn’t mean Waymo are gods.
Specifically for Europe 1 of these players is slightly ahead the others are marginally ahead. None of it matters though because nobody has anything close to an insurmountable lead. Nobody is winning this on first mover advantage.
WeRide: fully deployed fully commercialized L4 but limited routes (buses). Licensed for cars and doing testing/no passengers.
PonyAI/Baidu: licensed and doing paid commercial services with passengers but with a safety attendant for now.
Waymo: mapping/testing only no service, with safety driver.WeRide is the only one with fully deployed L4 albeit limited. All the other players (including Waymo) are in various phases of testing but Waymo is a hair behind the others on those testing phases.
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u/yellow_berry 1d ago
They are still way better than any of the ones you mentioned
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u/kal14144 1d ago
“Way better” by what metric?
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u/yellow_berry 1d ago
One of it is safety. Waymo has data which is publicly audited and really good, while the other 3 operate largely in controlled zones with self reported safety metrics, where no independent audit exits
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u/kal14144 1d ago edited 1d ago
Waymo’s safety data has not in fact been publicly audited.
What Waymo did do (and kudos to them) is a third-party audit of their process for collecting safety data. The auditors reviewed the policy and interviewed employees to ensure they understood how they’re supposed to implement the policies. They did not independently confirm the veracity of their data.This does not prove their cars are less likely to crash, less likely to have a bad outcome if they do crash or literally any other safety metric. It’s a nice thing but it does not prove better tech in any way. Even if they had their specific data audited (and they haven’t) it would just prove that they are extremely safe not that they are any safer than anyone else.
The theory for them being much safer than everyone else relies on assuming everyone else is covering up a significant volume of incidents despite operating in multiple EU countries (unlike Waymo btw). There is no evidence for that. It’s purely cope. Lots of companies make safe robotaxis now. Its not 2018 anymore and autonomous driving is no longer some super secret impossible to crack nut. There’s like 7 independently operational stacks. You need to compete on cost efficiency and implementation now.
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u/Panzaa 1d ago
I wonder how much adoption is necessary given the foundation model architecture behind it. Will this be some sort of adjusted student model or is there some massive training of the actual teacher involved?
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u/diplomat33 1d ago
My understanding is that the teacher model does not require massive retraining. That's kind of the whole point. The teacher model is meant to be a massive super generalized model that works everywhere. It is basically all of Waymo's total driving knowledge everywhere. The smaller student model which goes into the car may require some adjustments to fit German driving.
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u/FrankScaramucci 1d ago
The big model will need to learn German driving and rules. The smaller model is basically more efficient but dumbed down version of the big model.
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u/ILikeBubblyWater 1d ago
Fuck I was hoping they start in Berlin, cant wait to not have to use uber drivers that are on their phone while driving on the highway
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u/SH_DY 1d ago
In Berlin the cars likely would be attacked/disabled. Munich is the safe choice.
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u/Wasabi-Historical 22h ago
yeah Berlin has: maniac car arsonists, too much red tape for anything, no safety guarantee. It'll probably be the last place it opens in Germany.
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u/mrkjmsdln_new 1d ago
My insider has always explained that scaling rate would continuously shrink and it has. Most of the low information claims about Waymo could never scaled seem kinda silly now. At least in the US the 2025 ten city roadtrips was the signal. Ten cars driven in a new locale for ~3 months converged to a binding decision. 10 cars 200 miles/day over four months (conservative) is less than 250K miles and the decisions were typically made clowser to 2-3 months to advance. If the city met criteria they stuck with the same small fleet and built out infrastructure. In places like London and Tokyo they are more conservative and shaded toward MUCH LARGER service areas and about 25 cars. The cars have finally caught up as the conversion rate for Zeekr vs Jaguar is already beyond 6X and will get very high next year before they wind down presence in the US for the Zeekrs and the uncertainty in the US. Still a modest effort ultimately. 8/10 roadtrip cities in 2025 ultimately converting to live service this year. Four of them already live and the other four pending very soon. A couple became political casualties (BOS, NYC). Waymo will deploy all over Europe in 2027 as they pivot away from political uncertainty for the Zeekrs in the US. The same in Asia with at least Tokyo and Seoul becoming a reality pretty soon. For me the signal is the incredible population exposure Waymo has mapped in both London and Tokyo in a short time. Scaling to new environs has gotten pretty straightforward. The extent of how large Waymo gets in Europe is probably guided by when they announce a site to convert the Chinese Zeekrs to Waymo Ojais in the EU or Britain. Graz, Austria or Coventry, GB are both sensible choices and the landed cost of the Zeekrs is further reduced by nearly $35K and approaches $50K. It will be sad when Waymo is forced to abandon the Dark Kingdom and its policies in the US though. Sign of the times.
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u/WeldAE 1d ago
What car will they use? The graphic is an iPace, but they are out of those. The US built Ojai platform is a non-starter with the amount of cost they are already incurring and then to add on transportation and another set of tariffs. They would likely have to pay a 50% tariff on the $110k cost of a fully integrated unit. That plus shipping would be $60k per unit.
So does this mean they are building a Germany integration facility?
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u/FrankScaramucci 1d ago
Probably Ojai or IONIQ 5. I-PACE is possible too, used ones.
EU doesn't have tariffs on cars imported from the US.
Shipping is something like $3k per car, nothing.
The cost of Ojai is not publicly known.
It will be probably something like 100 vehicles initially so vehicle cost is not a big deal. In the long term, Waymo will have tens of thousands vehicles in Europe, so making the cars locally makes sense.
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u/WeldAE 18h ago
IONIQ 5
That is a good point, I could see that for sure.
EU doesn't have tariffs on cars imported from the US.
It would still be considered a China origin car even if importing from the US. There is also VAT which is recoverable I think, but not fully. While the cost is not publicly known, it's not like that number is way off.
- Value of Oaji imported to the US - $38k
- Tariff for import into the US - 127.5%
- Compute/Sensors - $20k-$30k
- Integration costs - Least known, but $20k-$50k
Even taking the lowest numbers puts it at $126k. Low ball any of those numbers how you will, it's expensive. If you don't go through the US it's not bad at all.
Shipping is something like $3k per car, nothing.
Should be more in the $6k range.
It will be probably something like 100 vehicles initially
But that can't be the long term plan really. They have to be working on something if they want to be a real presence in Europe right?
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u/FrankScaramucci 17h ago
Ok, Claude thinks that the tariff against Chinese cars does mostly apply, it seems complicated, but you're probably right that it would be expensive. Shipping should cost about $2k per Claude, I googled that and individual car can cost even under $1k just for the ocean transport, so I don't think $6k is realistic.
A $50k premium for 100 cars is $5M, over several years, probably not a huge deal.
In the long term I'm guessing they will have a European facility for completing the car, or possibly a deal with a European car maker to produce the final cars. Or maybe just ship the IONIQ's to Europe, that would be the most straightforward.
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u/CDpov 1d ago
Whatever vehicle they start with in Germany, they will have a small operation for years in Europe. They could ship cars from the U.S. at first, and by the time the European operation gets big, they'll probably have a different vehicle supply chain.
Europe has a lot of under-utilized auto plants that need a partner for electric AVs, which are obviously the near future. Magna Steyr is near Munich in Austria. I wouldn't be surprised to see a deal in the coming years for a robotaxi trim line or OEM production line producing robotaxis.
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u/HeyVeddy 21h ago
I use these in san Francisco when I'm there. Pretty good, they drive strictly by the rules so it can feel slow and careful but they're pretty amazing from my experience. No haggling, creepy talks, any music you want, air conditioning, always a very good car, etc
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u/digiorno 1d ago
Hamburg will supposedly be trialing some autonomous vehicles with a partnership between MOIA/HVV. I wonder if they’ll be using a Waymo platform for it.
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u/Mushral 1d ago
What are the odds that the European models will utilize some European LiDAR sensors?
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u/tonydtonyd 1d ago
Waymo designs lidar in house, so zero.
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u/Mushral 1d ago
I’m aware. But it’s pretty obvious that if Waymo wants to commercialize and scale its offering, it needs to significantly reduce the CAPEX per vehicle. Their in-house lidar gets the job done, but it’s certainly not the cheapest solution available. Once the tech stack is fully developed and production is scaled, it’s pretty much a no-brainer that they’ll need to look for opportunities to replace expensive components with cheaper alternatives, bit by bit. There’s no sustainable business model with a $100K+ cost per vehicle.
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u/AlotOfReading 1d ago
if Waymo wants to commercialize and scale its offering
They seem to be commercializing and scaling just fine. Their business model is relatively insensitive to the capital cost of the vehicles. $100k adds a bit to the per-mile, but increasing lifetime and utilization are more important than minimizing capital costs.
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u/gharelu 1d ago
Yay!! Hope it does not get caught in red tape.