Wayve and Uber will jointly develop and launch public-road trials of L4, fully autonomous, vehicles in London. For Uber, this new partnership represents its largest market to date in which it intends to pilot autonomous vehicles. The trials, themselves, will pair Wayve’s Embodied AI platform with Uber’s global mobility network.
The companies have together cited the UK Secretary of State for Transport’s announcement of an accelerated network for self-driving commercial pilots as a key enabler of their partnership. They will, at the same time, collaborate with the UK Government and Transport for London (TfL) on the permitting and regulatory approval process prior to launch.
While detailing their new partnership, Wayve and Uber highlighted the complexity of the driving environments both in London and in other UK cities, which offer different road layouts and traffic laws compared to the L4 testing locations chosen by similar AV technology companies in the US.
Through its AI-first approach, known as AV2.0, Wayve is aiming to improve on traditional AV systems that rely on HD maps, hand-coded rules, or geofenced domains. Here, Wayve’s end-to-end Embodied AI is capable of learning from its driving experiences, enabling it to adapt to new roads, vehicles, and cities in an efficient manner.
This capability was most recently demonstrated by the company as part of its Global Road show initiative, where an AI Driver system navigated 90 cities in 90 days across Europe, North America, and Japan. Over this time, it handled dense urban streets, rural tracks, and complex highway conditions with minimal prior exposure.
Wayve and Uber’s UK partnership follows their announcement of a multi-year collaboration to integrate Wayve’s Embodied AI technology into vehicles operating on Uber’s platform. This next phase of this collaboration will launch live operational trials on UK roads, building toward scaled deployment in key European markets.
Together, the companies are more broadly aiming to deliver safe, convenient, and intelligent autonomous driving services, designed to unlock new mobility opportunities while reinforcing the UK’s leadership in next-generation transportation.
