Waymo’s European Roadmap: Partner With €100 Million & Permanent Deployment Intention

European visitors to Waymo in Mountain View always have one question on their lips: “How and when is Waymo coming to Europe with its robotaxi service?” Waymo has always been evasive in answering this question, but now that has changed.

This week, a Belgian group of transportation officials and industry experts from the automotive industry are in the San Francisco Bay Area and for the first time, a concrete answer to this question has been given, as one of the participants, Tim De Ceunynck, reports. Cedric Dupont, Program Management Director at Waymo, gave very clear guidelines. In addition to a stable legal framework, Waymo needs a local partner who is prepared to provide a budget of €100 million and plan a permanent deployment of the robotaxi fleet. Pilot projects are no longer desired.

The turnaround seems to come with the ongoing expansion of Waymo’s robotaxi service, the first tests with Zeekr’s new vehicle, and the announcement of the 6th generation of the Waymo Driver. Waymo now seems to have gained enough confidence to bring the technology to more cities and regions, as well as other countries.

The call goes out to all interested parties to get to grips with Waymo’s specific requirements, set up the budget and prepare the legal framework to bring the first driverless robotaxi fleets to Europe.

Here is the full text that Tim De Ceunynck reports in a LinkedIn post:

“What would it take to get Waymo to Europe?”, we boldly asked Cedric Dupont, director product management at Waymo today. Surprisingly, the answer was equally bold and very straightforward. “A stable legal framework and a local partner willing to invest in a permanent deployment, not a pilot project. This would take a budget of around 100 million Euro.”. What do you think? Can we make this happen in Europe over the next years (and if so, should we…)?

We also visited Waymo’s main depot. Really impressive to see all the logistics that come with operating this service!

We also got a sneak peak of Waymo’s next generation vehicle (provided by Zeekr). Remarkable: the sensor set is optimised to include LESS sensors compared to the current generation vehicle (e.g. ‘only’ 13 cameras instead of the 29 on today’s vehicles). According to Cedric, Waymo now knows exactly what they need to drive fully autonomously in all circumstances (with sufficient redundancy for safety). The main technological challenges are now behind them, and now they are focusing on the further commercialization into a profitable service (which inevitably also means critically looking at costs).

This article was also published in German.