Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Transportation EU Google

Waymo Is Expanding to Germany (yahoo.com) 28

Posted by BeauHD from the rolling-out dept.
Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Munich by the end of 2027, marking the Google-owned company's first expansion into the European Union. "It already operates in 11 cities in the United States and has applied for a license in the United Kingdom to launch its robotaxis in London this year," notes Reuters. From the report: The Google subsidiary will start rolling out vehicles in the German city this year, which will be manually driven while the company "starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks" and testing with safety drivers, Waymo said in a statement.

"Bavaria is determined to live up to its pioneering role and be an international leader in autonomous driving," Florian Herrmann, the head of the Bavarian state chancellery, said in the statement. "Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment."

[...] German authorities gave autonomous vehicles the green light in 2021 to operate in the country in approved geographical areas. Other countries are looking at following suit, though the EU's broader autonomous driving rules are set by the U.N.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Waymo Is Expanding to Germany More

Waymo Is Expanding to Germany

Comments Filter:

  • Not going to happen.

    They are using "AI" as in artificial neural networks (ANN) to run their cars.

    Hence there is no single requirement the car is supposed to follow, no issue tracker ticket, no line of code, no test, no review, no confirmation.

    Hence: it does not formally fulfil any requirement to be allowed on a European street.

    All European self driving cars: use standard algorithms, build on top of a specc, implemented and tested and reviewed - with *millions* of miles of save travel under supervision.

    • Never skip medication day.

      PS> Waymo has millions of miles of safe autonomous driving in multiple cities with dense pedestrian and vehicle traffic that prove its safety: https://waymo.com/safety/impac... [waymo.com]

      • That is not what we talked about.

        I talked about classical algorithms and general specifications, that have a proven million miles test track.

        For AI based systems we have no idea yet, how to assess them.

    • Hence: it does not formally fulfil any requirement to be allowed on a European street.

      Errr what? Look you've demonstrated a lot of complete ignorance of laws in Europe in the past, even in your own country. But without even looking into it I'm calling bullshit. Provide a citation.

      In fact, quit the opposite. The EU AI Act clearly defines self driving algorithms as a high-risk AI category and provides clear guidance on what is required for its use, quite the opposite from banning it.

      Also in your own country, your own pride and joy company Mercedes-Benz has a Germany approved L3 automated syste

      • Mercedes-Benz has a Germany approved L3 automated system "Drive Pilot"
        Yes.
        which is fundamentally AI based and powered by NVIDIA Drive AGX AI processors.
        That is wrong.
        The AI is an assistant - mainly for LIDAR - for the main system.

        The main system is and TI ARM SoC, programmed completely classical in C++.

        • That is wrong.

          Mercedes own marketing materials disagree with you.

          The main system is and TI ARM SoC, programmed completely classical in C++.

          The final drive system of any vehicle is a small automotive grade SoC. It's becoming clear that you have no idea how any of these systems work together. You can add that along with your own laws to the list of things you seemingly know nothing about.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And if that were true, you would be correct. But the reality is a bit different. Yes, there are ANNs in there. No, they do not have control. What happens is that the ANN essentially makes suggestions to the (hard rule- and algorithm-based) car steering system. That system needs these suggestions to keep the car driving and cannot come up with them itself for many situations. But it can always fact-check them and it can get the car into a safe state if it finds these suggestions are wrong or dangerous and it

      • 35 years ago there were no LLMs / ANNs in cars.

        I actually read up on this and thegabz's post about Daimler using NVIDIA and LLMs.

        They only do route planning and lidar for "looking around". Why anyone needs an ANN for route planning is beyond me.

        The real driving is still done by Continentals ADAS (now AUMOVIO SE).

        Interesting is: Continental is in a cooperation with NVIDIA, using its millions of miles visual and other sensorics data to actually train new models on chips made specifically for automotive/automa

  • Why the need? (Score:3)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Tuesday August 25, 2026 @01:23PM (#66306396) Homepage

    Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment.

    Really? That is a need? Why, what's the hurry?

    You know another company that moved really quickly from testing to real-world deployment? OceanGate.

    • Why, what's the hurry?

      Probably worried about competition from Tesla's Robotaxis.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Hmm. I wonder how well robotaxis will do in the EU? I don't know about Munich, but most cities in the EU have decent public transit and a population that's not afraid of using it. And a lot of them have narrow and winding streets with lots of visual noise that is probably a bad environment for self-driving cars.

        And they also have strong taxi unions (eg, Uber is mostly banned in Germany and where it does operate, it's more like a traditional taxi company.)

        • The only thing that can stop self driving cars is taxi unions, delivery drivers, basically people trying to preserve their jobs at the expense of lives lost. The technology itself works really well, and that's with all the obstacles and naysayers trying to block it before it even has a chance. If we evaluated based on what's the safest .. self driving car safety is miles ahead of any human ALREADY https://waymo.com/safety/impac... [waymo.com] And that's with people actively trying to block it from getting developed. P

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dskoll ( 99328 )

            I didn't comment on the safety of self-driving cars. I agree they probably are or will be safer than human-driven cars. If a Waymo gets confused in a small or confusing street, it'll probably just stop rather than crashing.

            Now let's see the statistics for accidents per person-kilometre on public transit vs Waymos. I suspect public transit will come out ahead given that a bus can carry dozens of people and a train can carry hundreds.

            • I asked Claude and this is what it said: Both Waymo and US transit are far safer than human-driven cars, but they're hard to compare directly because they report in different units. Transit buses run about 0.09 deaths per 100M passenger-miles and passenger rail about 0.19 â" and most rail deaths are trespassers, not riders; for actual passengers rail is closer to 0.015, making it the safest ground mode. Cars kill at roughly 70x the bus rate and 20x the train rate per passenger-mile. Waymo, through 220

        • Waymo operates just fine in San Francisco which has plenty of very narrow tight streets (2 way with 1 lane) with bad visibility and lots of extra shitty drivers, double parkers etc. It goes around these just fine, and when it gets legit stuck on something (road closed off by cops or something) it can dial home to have an operator give instructions on what it should do next.

      • Why, what's the hurry?

        Probably worried about competition from Tesla's Robotaxis.

        The quote was from the Bavarian government guy, so it seems unlikely that he's concerned about Waymo's competitive worries.

        Also, German regulators are very cautious, so I expect Tesla's camera-only and less-mature robotaxi service will have a harder time getting approved.

    • Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment.

      Really? That is a need? Why, what's the hurry?

      You know another company that moved really quickly from testing to real-world deployment? OceanGate.

      Well, given that Waymo has been testing for nearly 20 years and been operating commercially for six years, currently operating nearly 4000 vehicles in 11 cities doing 500k rides per week... there's not a lot of risk.

      Roads in Munich aren't terribly different from roads in US cities. Stoplights work a little differently. Munich does get a little snow, but rarely very much and it almost never lasts long. If Waymo's vehicles can't deal with it they may just suspend service... though I expect they'll proba

    • Really? That is a need? Why, what's the hurry?

      Competition

      You know another company that moved really quickly from testing to real-world deployment? OceanGate.

      Did OceanGate demonstrate 220 million miles of real world travel testing? No. They are moving quickly into a new market. They have been anything but quick from testing to actual first real world use. In fact this is a company that spent many years testing before they let out their product in a controlled fashion carefully on the market.

      There's certainly some criticism about Waymo, but lack of testing and concerns about safety are the absolute least of anyone's concerns. Your comparison is quite s

  • Can they pass the knowledge of London?

Slashdot Top Deals

"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system] made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977

Close