Waymo picks Munich for its first EU robotaxi service, launching 2027

Waymo will make Munich the first city in the European Union where it operates a robotaxi service, the Alphabet-owned company said on Tuesday. Testing begins in the city within the next few weeks, with a public launch planned for the end of 2027.

The start is deliberately modest: a small fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles driving across several Munich districts with trained validation drivers behind the wheel. That phase is about groundwork rather than passengers — building high-definition maps of the streets, training local autonomous-driving specialists, and adapting the software to the city's driving conditions, which differ markedly from the American sunbelt cities where Waymo built its record.

Munich becomes Waymo's third international city after London and Tokyo, where testing is already under way. The choice of Germany is not incidental. The country passed an Act on Autonomous Driving in 2021 that created a legal route for Level 4 vehicles — cars that drive themselves within a defined area without a human ready to take over — to operate on public roads subject to regulatory approval. Few European countries have a comparable framework in place.

The move also follows a quieter pattern of preparation. Waymo registered a German entity in June, and has since registered entities in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland, suggesting Munich is a first step rather than a one-off.

Europe is a harder proving ground than the company's home market in several concrete ways: denser historic street layouts, narrower lanes, heavier cyclist and tram traffic, and winter weather that degrades the sensors autonomous systems depend on. A 2027 public launch gives Waymo more than a year of local driving before it has to carry a paying passenger — which is roughly the runway it took in each US city where the service now runs without a driver.