“HAMBURG -- The self-driving taxi carefully steered around the delivery vehicle that blocked its path -- and straight into oncoming traffic.
"Not the best driving decision," sighed Christian Senger, head of autonomous vehicles at Volkswagen, which built the robotaxi.
The incident, during an otherwise smooth test drive last month, underlines how Europe -- once the world leader in automotive engineering -- is playing catch-up with the U.S. and China.
Alphabet's Waymo has run fully driverless taxis in the U.S. for almost five years without serious mishap and now operates more than 250,000 rides a week. Similar services are available in cities across China, run by local tech companies such as Baidu.
With no homegrown tech giants and more onerous regulations, Europe has largely stayed out of the autonomous-driving race. Now, it is hitting the gas, eager to hedge its bets on the future of the auto industry and foster innovation after years of sluggish growth.
Hamburg is emerging as the center of the region's robotaxi push. About 30 specially adapted versions of the Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric minivan drive themselves around the city's crowded streets, bearing the black-and-bronze livery of the company's ride-pooling service, Moia.
With the technology still in test mode, human backup drivers sit behind the wheel ready to take over if it misfires, and rides are bookable only by staff. Moia plans to start carrying regular Hamburgers in the coming months.
Americans will likely be next. In April, Volkswagen said it would deploy thousands of self-driving minivans in the U.S. through an agreement with Uber, starting in Los Angeles in 2026.
The so-called Volkswagen ID.Buzz AV is the result of a partnership between the world's second-largest carmaker and Mobileye, the Israeli autonomous-driving pioneer that is majority-owned by Intel.
Last month, Volkswagen said it was putting the vehicle into regular production. It plans to sell it together with the Moia platform as a package to transport providers, both public and private.
At a launch party, Hamburg's local transport minister welcomed the autonomous shuttle as a tool to fill gaps in the city's transportation network, which already includes subways, urban rail and buses.
The critical step of removing human backup drivers will probably come at the end of 2026 in Los Angeles, said Volkswagen's Senger. He expects Europe, where road conditions and regulations are more complex, to follow in 2027.
During The Wall Street Journal's recent test ride through Hamburg, the safety driver had to assume control on two occasions. Both were caused by delivery vehicles parked on the road for unloading, leaving no space to pass without breaking traffic rules.
Once, the safety operator pulled into a bike lane to maneuver around the obstruction. On the second occasion, when the vehicle headed into traffic, the safety driver guided it back into the correct lane and logged an incident for further investigation by pressing a button next to the wheel.
Tesla's robotaxis also have proven erratic since their introduction late last month, with safety operators in the front passenger seat. Users have posted videos online appearing to show the vehicles exceeding the speed limit, braking for no reason and in one case briefly driving in the opposite lane of traffic. A week after launch, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the technology would keep improving "with each mile driven."
Like Waymo, Volkswagen is replacing the driver with a suite of sensors, including 13 cameras and nine lidars -- expensive devices that use laser pulses to sense their surroundings. They can handle situations that confuse cameras, such as rain and snow. Tesla doesn't use lidars, an exception in the race to make cars driverless.
Automated driving has increasingly become a focus of technological competition between the U.S. and China. While robotaxi operators are already freer to experiment without explicit government approval in the U.S. than elsewhere, the Trump administration this year has taken early steps to remove what it sees as regulatory barriers.
Europe has jumped on the bandwagon. The European Union in March launched an action plan to reboot its struggling auto industry that included pledges to create large testing areas and regulatory "sandboxes" for the new technology. Cars account for a hefty 7% of the bloc's economy.
Outside the car industry, Europe's most-prominent autonomous-driving company is Wayve, a London-based startup backed by Uber, Nvidia, SoftBank and others.
Last month, Wayve and Uber said they would launch a pilot robotaxi service in London in 2026. The deal enjoys the explicit support of the growth-hungry U.K. government, which said self-driving vehicles could add the equivalent of $58 billion to the country's economy.
Other trials in Europe rely on Chinese technology, with data stored locally by public-transport partners to allay security concerns.
Most carmakers have given up on the technology after years of slow progress and high cash burn. In 2022, Ford pulled the plug on Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based joint venture with Volkswagen. General Motors said in December it would stop funding its Cruise business in California after more than $10 billion in losses.
Volkswagen's wholly owned robotaxi project is less expensive than others, according to Senger, because it can join with group brands Porsche and Audi to source sensors and software at scale. Putting the ID.Buzz AV on a production line will further cut costs relative to the EVs retrofitted with extra cameras and computing used by Waymo and others.
But the company is reluctant to say how many of the vehicles it hopes to make or sell.
"We will scale at the speed of trust," said Moia CEO Sascha Meyer.” [1]
No wonder most West European government money from now on will go into production of weapons just to calm nerves and to pretend that they are doing something.
1. Volkswagen's Robotaxi Has to Play Catch-Up With Waymo and Tesla. Wilmot, Stephen. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 07 July 2025: B1.
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