Waymo Prepares to Launch Driverless Taxi Service in Germany

    Waymo is preparing to launch a driverless taxi service in Munich, Germany. Under the company's plan, the commercial robotaxi service could become available to the public toward the end of 2027. Waymo has announced that preparations will begin in the coming weeks. During the initial phase, the company's vehicles will be driven by drivers on the streets of Munich to create a high-precision digital map of the city. The vehicles will then be tested in autonomous mode with specially trained specialists behind the wheel.    If all testing and regulatory processes proceed as planned, Waymo aims to commercially launch a fully autonomous taxi service in Munich in late 2027. According to the company, Waymo vehicles have completed more than 20 million trips to date and currently provide hundreds of thousands of commercial trips each week. The company also says it has traveled more than 350 million kilometers in fully autonomous mode.    Citing its own statistics, Waymo said its autonomous vehicles were involved in crashes resulting in serious injuries 16 times less often and crashes in which pedestrians were injured 14 times less often than human drivers. Germany is a particularly attractive market for Waymo. In 2021, the country adopted a legal framework regulating the commercial use of Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Nevertheless, no German company has yet established a large-scale, fully driverless commercial vehicle fleet in the country.