Uber and Pony.ai said on Thursday that Pony.ai’s seventh-generation robotaxis will begin road tests in London in the coming weeks, TechCrunch reported.
The two companies have worked together since 2025. Rides in Pony.ai vehicles can already be booked through the Uber app in Zagreb, and in August the pair set out a plan to put more than 2,000 robotaxis into European cities.
London is crowded before anyone has opened for business. Wayve, the British startup, already runs supervised rides on Uber’s network there, using 15 modified Ford Mustang Mach-Es with safety drivers, according to Zag Daily. Waymo is testing in the city. Baidu’s Apollo Go is testing with Lyft.
James Peng, Pony.ai’s chief executive, said London is a huge market and that competition is great.
The city matters because of the law. Britain’s Automated Vehicles Act 2024 created a route to approval for passenger services with no driver, and London is the first large European capital where several operators are lining up to use it.
For Uber it is a hedge. The company builds no driving system of its own, so it is signing every developer it can and letting them compete on its app.
What the announcement left out is most of what a rider would ask. There is no date for paid trips and no fleet size for London. Zag Daily reported that early operations will carry safety drivers, and that a fully driverless service needs regulatory approval nobody has yet received. Testing in weeks is a start date for engineers. For passengers there is not one.
