London's robotaxi launch slips past 2026 — the licences were the easy part

The rollout of robotaxis on London's streets is now unlikely to happen in 2026. Uber and Wayve hold the city's first private hire vehicle licences for self-driving rides — granted by Transport for London in early August — but are still waiting on TfL guidance setting out how the service must operate. Behind that sit unfinished vehicle-approval steps: the type-approval listings and the operator permits that a paid driverless service needs are not in place. Wayve's VP of commercial and operations said in June the company was "hopeful to be launching in the next couple of months" and "just waiting for a couple of last approvals". Initial rides, when they come, will carry a safety driver.

Why it matters

We recorded the TfL licences as a milestone three weeks ago and described the rides as supervised, with a licensed driver at the wheel. This is the other half of that entry, and it is the more instructive half: the licence was the visible step, and the invisible steps — vehicle type approval, permits, published operating guidance — are the ones that set the date. A regulator granting permission to operate is not the same as a regulator having written down what operating means, and in the UK those are different bodies on different clocks.

Set against Nevada capping Tesla at ten vehicles and California clearing Waymo across 18 counties, the pattern holds: approvals track demonstrated process, and the jurisdictions moving fastest are the ones that had already written the rulebook. London licensed before it published. That is not a scandal — the triple-lock licence genuinely was a UK first — but it means the milestone we logged is a permission, not a service, and the tracker entry says so.

What to watch

Publication of TfL's operating guidance, the first vehicle type-approval listing for a UK driverless service, and whether the first paid London rides still carry a safety driver when they start.