Survey of thousands reveals varied attitudes to new versus old transport options
Autonomous ride-hailing services – AKA robotaxis – are making their way to Europe, with Waymo (Google), Uber and Lyft (Baidu) announcing London launches in 2026, and UK-based startup Wayve targeting 2027.
This race – being touted mainly as a US-China faceoff – was kickstarted by an announcement by the UK Government that it would “fast-track pilots to spring 2026… before a potential wider rollout when the full Automated Vehicles Act becomes law from the second half of 2027.”
EU-wide legislation around the use of autonomous vehicles is still in development, building on the (limited) laws already in operation in individual countries. The General Safety Regulation was expanded in 2024 to include technical rules for automated and connected vehicles, particularly those at Level 3 autonomy and above, i.e. the vehicle can drive itself in certain environments, but a human driver must be available to intervene if necessary.
With AI playing a growing role in the operation of autonomous vehicles, the EU’s AI Act, set to be enforced widely in the European Union from August 2026, will also influence the deployment of robotaxis. The Act, which has been described as “the world’s first unified rulebook for AI systems”, initially saw the EU lauded as a trailblazer. But attitudes are shifting. Recent changes and delays to the Act’s implementation – framed by the tech industry as a necessary step to keep the region globally competitive – have been described by policy experts as “a deregulatory turn that risks trading away democratic safeguards”.
As a result, it’s not entirely clear when robotaxis are likely to appear in EU cities. Though, any rollout is expected to be led by Estonian ride-hailing platform Bolt, which recently announced a partnership with China’s Pony.ai.
Navigating the built environment
Arguably, in London robotaxis will face their most significant technological challenge to date. The city’s road network pre-dates cars by several centuries. It is full of narrow, twisting streets that are difficult to navigate even for the most experienced driver. There’s no grid pattern, lots of complex intersections, and a high occurrence of roundabouts – it’s a far cry from the types of road networks these cars have been used on thus far.
And London’s roads aren’t just used by cars, vans and trucks. Future robotaxis will need to navigate a fleet of 9,000 buses that stop frequently, 1.5 million cyclists on the road per day, the occasional escaped army horse, countless tourists, and of course frequent ‘jaywalkers’ (it is not illegal in the UK to cross the road outside of designated crossings).
Of course, there are also still big, unanswered questions around the safety of autonomous vehicles operating in busy urban centers. In the US, there have been countless examples of driverless cars unexpectedly stopping on train tracks, in tunnels, and in response to power cuts. The US National Transportation Safety Board recently announced an investigation into Waymo after multiple reports of its vehicles illegally passing stopped school buses in at least two states.
And in any discussions around safety, there is a lot of hype to navigate. Just last week, Tesla announced that their robotaxis successfully carried passengers in Austin, Texas, “with no safety monitor in the car”. But it was quickly revealed that each of the ‘unsupervised’ cars were in fact being tailed by other ‘supervised’ Tesla cars (with drivers present) …so any claims of achieving true unsupervised autonomy are disingenuous at best.
The manner in which autonomous vehicle companies share data can also be opaque. For example, as David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, reported recently, they often lump different types of crashes together, or include miles driven without any passengers in their total mileage of safe driving.
For Zipper, there is nowhere near enough reliable data to support the narrative that self-driving cars will be safer than those driven by humans.
Public attitudes towards robotaxis
In terms of public attitudes to these vehicles in Europe, the picture is murky. A new survey of almost 8,500 Europeans shows that support for the introduction of robotaxis trails far behind support for improvements in more traditional public transport.
Commissioned by a non-profit called Clean Cities (and delivered by market research company, OpinionWay), the survey sought to understand how urbanites feel about public transport – metro, tram, train, buses and robotaxis – in locations like London, Berlin, Warsaw and Rome.
Just over four in five (83%) of respondents said that they’d support the expansion of rail projects in their city. The same proportion wanted to see better public transport connections between suburban areas and the inner city. There was also significant support for interventions such as reducing public transport fares for low-income users (70%), and converting some car lanes on major roads into bus or tram lanes (63%).
In contrast, results for robotaxis were mixed, with slightly more support (37%) expressed overall than opposition (35%), while a large group (28%) described themselves as ‘undecided’. Support for autonomous vehicles was highest in Sofia (Bulgaria) and Paris (France), and lowest in Madrid (Spain).
There were notable gender and age-based differences between attitudes towards autonomous vehicles. More men were supportive than women (43% vs 32%), and robotaxis were more popular with people under 35 than those aged 35 and over (47% vs 33%). More than half of respondents (52%) with primary school aged children expressed support for the introduction of robotaxis in their city.
A separate, smaller study, published in November 2025, surveyed a UK cohort that included individuals living with physical disability, mental health conditions or no disability. They asked each participant about their attitudes towards a variety of autonomous vehicle (AV) services (e.g. robotaxis and autonomous buses). They found that people with physical impairments showed “a clear preference for AV taxis and AV buses, while individuals with mental health conditions favor AV remote taxis.” These are similar to a robotaxi, but with remote control capabilities, allowing for human operators to intervene if necessary. The authors continue, “The preferences appear to be shaped not only by logistical accessibility needs but also by psychological safety and emotional comfort.”
Clean Cities senior campaign director, Barbara Stoll has called on city leaders to play a more active role in the implementation of autonomous vehicles into European cities, “The initially unregulated e-scooter chaos cities went through is a comparable lesson in what can happen when useful new technology is allowed to take over the streets. Mayors need to steer robotaxis so they become a force for good, complementing rather than competing with public transport. What is clear from our polling is that the public will support that direction.”
