Wayve believes Londoners will stop noticing they are sitting in driverless cars within minutes of using them, as the UK AI startup prepares to launch autonomous vehicles on Uber’s network in the capital.
Katie Fischer, Wayve’s vice president of commercial and operations, said the company expected passengers to move quickly from novelty to habit once its self-driving vehicles begin carrying members of the public, according to MyLondon.
“At the beginning when people have never experienced autonomy, they get in the car, they are taking videos of the wheel, they are hyper-focused. About three minutes in, they’re doing the exact same thing that we all do in any other ride-hail, they’re back on their phone,” Fischer said at the SXSW Londone event on Monday:
Fisher said the company was now close to moving from testing to public use:
“The really exciting thing that’s happening this year is we will be launching our autonomous vehicles to the public on the Uber network. That’ll be happening imminently, which is an exciting step after a long journey.”
The launch will be closely watched by ministers and investors, after Wayve raised $1.5bn earlier this year from backers including Softbank, Nvidia, Microsoft, Uber, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and Stellantis.
The company has also signed a strategic partnership with Stellantis to integrate its AI driving software into future vehicles, with the first North American deployment planned for 2028.
Wayve’s bet is that autonomous driving will not be rolled out city-by-city through tightly mapped robotaxi fleets alone, but through software that can be built directly into vehicles and adapted across different markets.
“We integrate our technology directly with automotive manufacturers, which means that vehicles will come off the assembly line with already a model in it, already the safety features, which allows scale,” Fischer said. She added that Wayve’s cars now run “24/7, 365 in London, in the US, Tokyo, as well as Germany”.
Unlike many rivals, Wayve says its tech does not rely on high-definition maps or restricted geo-fenced areas.
“We don’t need HD AV1-0 maps or high-definition maps, which means we don’t operate within a geofence,” Fischer said. “This is really unique in the L4 autonomous vehicle industry.”
Instead, the firm uses what it calls end-to-end AI, a single driving intelligence which contrasts with earlier approaches based on hand-coded rules.
“In AV1.0, you use hand-coded rules. So, if this, then that,” she said. “What we’ve discovered over the years is that when you use a hand-coded approach, it’s what we call brittle.”
(Picture: Wayve)
