Wayve Reportedly Ready to Roll Out Self-Driving Tech

Self-driving startup Wayve is reportedly preparing to make its commercial debut.

The U.K. company will introduce its driver-assistance system in partnership with global car companies in the U.S. and Germany “in the near term,” CEO Alex Kendall said in an interview with Bloomberg News Monday (March 10).

Kendall declined to offer an exact timeline or disclose which automakers the company will be working with, the report added.

Bloomberg notes that Wayve has also published new data showing its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software can adapt to U.S. driving behaviors quicker and at a lower cost than other approaches, achieving U.K.-equivalent performance with just 500 hours’ worth of U.S.-specific data collected in an eight-week period.

“What we see is it’s just exponentially more efficient with each new market we go to,” Kendall said. “Five hundred hours to generalize to California is remarkable, and we saw that even less has been required for our launch in Germany.”

The news comes as a number of self-driving car companies are preparing to begin serving consumers. For example, Google-backed Waymo has recently begun offering driverless ride service on the Uber app.

And both Waymo and Lyft are preparing to launch their self-driving services in Atlanta later this year. Tesla, meanwhile, is preparing to bring robotaxis to its home city of Austin in June.

Wayve’s strategy, Bloomberg adds, has been to sell its software to car companies rather than market its product to consumers.

“Major manufacturers are producing cars and millions of units of volume today that have the hardware needed for the software,” Kendall said. “We are ready to go and we’re excited to move very quickly to see the benefits out there broadly around the world.”

However, the company last year formed a partnership with Uber that saw that company agree to put self-driving vehicles powered by Wayve’s software on the Uber platform in multiple markets around the world.

As PYMNTS wrote at the time, observers are wondering whether robotaxis mark the tip of autonomous and self-driving innovation.

“Despite the optimism surrounding robotaxis, the road to full autonomy has been anything but smooth. The development of self-driving technology is a complex and costly endeavor, requiring advancements in artificial intelligence, sensor technology, and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication,” that report said. “While companies like Waymo have achieved milestones — such as launching a fully autonomous ride-hailing service in select areas — these services are still limited in scope and geography.”