Waymo to bring robotaxis to Munich, with public rides expected by late 2027

Waymo announces Munich expansion

Waymo said Tuesday that it intends to launch a robotaxi service in Munich, according to TechCrunch. The announcement comes several months after the Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company registered a corporate entity in Germany, signalling that its European ambitions extend beyond the United Kingdom.

In a blog post, Waymo said it is coordinating with Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA), state-level authorities and local officials. Commercial ride-hailing open to the general public is expected towards the end of 2027, though the company must first complete mapping, testing and regulatory approvals.

The staged rollout playbook

Munich will follow the sequence Waymo has used across the 11 cities where it already runs commercial robotaxi operations. The first step is manual driving: human operators drive the vehicles around the city to build detailed maps of the streets.

Next, Waymo deploys its autonomous vehicles with human safety drivers behind the wheel, before gradually removing them. At that stage, the company typically gives rides to its own employees, journalists and invited guests. Only after that does it open a limited public service, eventually expanding to all riders once it secures the regulatory approval required for full commercial operation.

Germany's regulatory head start

Waymo's move into Germany lands in a country that paved the way for driverless cars more than five years ago. German lawmakers passed legislation permitting driverless vehicles on public roads, making Germany the first EU member state to establish a legal framework for Level 4 autonomous driving.

Level 4, a designation from the Society of Automobile Engineers, describes a system that handles all driving tasks in certain conditions or environments with no expectation that a human will intervene.

That framework has turned Germany into a magnet for autonomous vehicle developers. According to the KBA's most recent data cited by TechCrunch, several companies, including Mobileye and Volkswagen, currently hold permits to test autonomous vehicles in the country. Waymo itself holds none at this stage.

Notably, most permit holders — among them UK startup Wayve and Israel-based Autobrains — operate under Level 3 permits. Level 3, or conditional automation, allows the system to drive in specific circumstances, such as at low speeds on highways, but requires the driver to remain ready to take over.

A widening European race

Germany is not the only European arena drawing AV developers. London is emerging as a separate battleground, TechCrunch reports. Waymo has said it plans to launch a commercial service in the UK capital in 2026, where it would compete directly with Wayve and its partner Uber. Chinese tech giant Baidu has also begun testing autonomous vehicles in London through its partnership with Lyft and Freenow.

If those timelines hold, Waymo's London service would arrive well before its Munich offering reaches the public, giving the company two parallel European launches at very different stages of maturity.

Why it matters

Munich represents another concrete step in Waymo's transformation from a US operator into a global one, and Germany offers something few other markets can: an established legal framework specifically designed for fully driverless vehicles. The catch is time. Even with supportive law on the books, Waymo faces a multi-year process of mapping, testing and permitting before ordinary riders can hail a driverless car in Munich, and it starts from a position of holding no German permits while rivals like Mobileye and Volkswagen already test there.

The end-2027 target also illustrates how slowly even well-funded AV operators must move when entering new jurisdictions. For European consumers, the practical takeaway is that competition is arriving on multiple fronts — Waymo in London and Munich, Wayve with Uber, and Baidu with Lyft and Freenow — but fully driverless ride-hailing at scale remains a late-decade prospect on the continent.