Driverless taxi services are set to begin trials on United Kingdom (UK) roads in 2026, with companies including Uber, Lyft and Waymo planning to test autonomous vehicles in London, subject to regulatory approval.

Uber and Lyft are both preparing separate driverless taxi trials in the capital through partnerships with Chinese technology firm Baidu.

The tests are expected to run at the same time, marking the first head-to-head trials by major United States (US) and Chinese autonomous taxi operators in a European city.

The rollout follows the Automated Vehicles Act 2024, which provides a legal framework for driverless cars and shifts responsibility for incidents from the person inside the vehicle to the “authorised self-driving entity”.

David Risher, Lyft’s chief executive, said the company would use Apollo Go RT6 vehicles that are “purpose-built for rideshare.”

In his words, “We expect to start testing our initial fleet with dozens of vehicles next year – pending regulatory approval,” Risher said.

The company “plans to scale to hundreds from there,” he added.

According to Sky News, Alphabet-owned Waymo has already begun supervised testing in London, while Baidu continues to expand globally, competing with firms such as Waymo, whose vehicles have been spotted on the city’s streets.

London-based start-up Wayve is also planning driverless trials in 2026, supported by around $1bn (£750m) in investment led by SoftBank Group and Uber. The company is testing what it describes as “mapless” artificial intelligence on London roads.

For Lyft, the UK trials form part of its international growth plans following its $200m (£148m) acquisition of European taxi app FreeNow earlier this year.

While driverless taxis already operate in cities such as San Francisco and Tokyo, their arrival in the UK has raised concerns among some drivers.

Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, told Sky News in October that he was not currently worried about the technology.

“It’s a novelty, it is a gimmick. It is the solution that we don’t need. Who needs a driverless cab?” he said.

He added that he did not believe Londoners would trust the vehicles or “put their kids in one to go to school.”

Waymo said in response that it “provides hundreds of thousands of rides every week in the US and shared in May of this year that we’ve provided over 10,000,000 fully autonomous rides to the public.”

However, concerns remain around safety as a2024 study found that while self-driving cars are generally safer than human-driven vehicles, they were more likely to be involved in accidents at dawn, dusk or while turning, and were more than five times as likely to crash in low-light conditions. (Sky News)

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