Waymo might be the largest robotaxi player currently operating, but it has yet to properly face the tangled web of European regulations. By Stewart Burnett
Waymo has quietly registered Waymo Germany GmbH in Munich’s commercial register, with a stated purpose of deploying local robotaxi services and providing support for third-party autonomous vehicle operators. The entity was incorporated on 13 May and registered on 15 June, with its business address listed at Google’s Munich office; job postings for test drivers and vehicle trainers in Berlin and Munich have already appeared.
No German launch date, or even a list of planned cities, has been announced thus far, nor are they likely to emerge in the coming weeks. Waymo’s standard international entry sequence—legal entity, mapping, local operator partnerships, regulatory engagement, supervised testing—means the GmbH is the first step in a process that typically takes months to years before public rides actually begin.
In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said only that it is “engaging with officials around the world to explain our technology and lay the groundwork for global operations”. It also emphasised that London and Tokyo remain by far the more advanced of its international programmes: live commercial services are expecting to begin for the former later in 2026, while no target dates have yet been offered for the latter.
In Tokyo, Waymo is conducting supervised data collection in partnership with local taxi operator Nihon Kotsu and the Go app across several central wards; in London, supervised vehicles are operating on public roads ahead of a driverless public service pending Department for Transport approval. Talks are also known to have taken place with Australian officials about future robotaxi deployments.
It should be noted that Munich is not an arbitrary starting point. It is BMW’s home city, within an hour of Mercedes-Benz’s Stuttgart base, and also located in close proximity to Volkswagen’s software unit Cariad. Given Waymo’s disruptive outsider status, this home base is arguably one of the most symbolically charged that the company could have chosen. Indeed, registering there sends a confident message: Waymo is comfortable deploying its autonomous driving technology in cities already long-steeped in German automotive history.
To be sure, the local competitive landscape is already dense. Baidu has stated plans to bring its RT6 robotaxi to the Lyft app in Germany and the UK in 2026; Uber has partnered with Tel Aviv-based AI company Autobrains to launch robotaxis in Munich; Momenta is conducting European testing; and Wayve—which is simultaneously preparing its London launch, also alongside Uber—has conducted testing operations on German roads.
Germany will prove an appreciably more challenging market than any US city Waymo has entered: bicycle infrastructure, tram lines, narrow urban streets, construction signage and right-of-way norms all differ materially from Phoenix or San Francisco, and German regulators will not treat Waymo’s US safety record as a substitute for demonstrated European performance.
Beyond Germany, Waymo’s international ambitions are backed by substantial capital: a US$16bn funding round in February 2026 valued the Alphabet unit at US$126bn and was specifically designated to support global commercial expansion. The company has identified 21 additional cities both domestically and internationally for expansion beyond its current 11 US markets. The London launch, Waymo’s first in Europe or anywhere overseas, will serve as the primary test of whether its US playbook translates to a different regulatory culture, a different road environment and a public that has not grown up watching Waymo operate.
The broader European robotaxi race is being run on a fragmented regulatory terrain. Germany joined France, Italy and other EU member states in June in a declaration aimed at coordinating autonomous vehicle testing standards across the continent—progress toward a common framework, but not yet an operational approval pathway. Individual city-level permissions, national-level licensing regimes, and the EU’s AI Act requirements for high-risk automated systems create a compliance matrix that no single operator has yet fully navigated.