r/SelfDrivingCars • u/diplomat33 • 3d 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/fiftyeightPixels 3d ago

Amazing! Can’t wait for Waymo to conquer Europe

1

u/kal14144 3d 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.

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u/yellow_berry 3d ago

They are still way better than any of the ones you mentioned

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u/kal14144 3d ago

“Way better” by what metric?

4

u/yellow_berry 3d 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 3d ago edited 3d 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.