Three robotaxi start dates for Madrid, and why 2027 is crowded

Three robotaxi start dates for Madrid, and why 2027 is crowded

Three companies have now put a date on driverless rides in the Region of Madrid. WeRide, Uber and AVOMO expect commercial operations before the end of 2026 under Spain's first national Level 4 permit. Waymo says it will take its first riders there in 2027. Bolt says its own service, on Lucid cars with NVIDIA's driving software, starts in Madrid in 2027. No other city in our reporting has more than one operator naming a date.

That finding came out of a count. Since 17 October we have filed autonomy news in its own category, and we went back through every one of the 30 reports in it, from the first in April to the most recent, to pull out each dated promise: a start of service, a fleet size by a date, a permit, a consultation deadline. The result is a calendar that is more crowded in 2027 than in any other year, a freight business that is further along than ride-hailing, and a warning in the numbers themselves: 21 of the 30 reports carry our red verification note, because the plan they describe rests on the company's own word.

This piece sets out what the count shows, where the dates cluster, and what a business planning around autonomous vehicles, whether as a fleet operator, a logistics buyer, a city or a supplier, should take from it.

How we counted

The set is every report published in our autonomous vehicles category up to 27 October 2026: 30 items. Thirteen of them were published in October and nine in September, so the set leans heavily on the last eight weeks. Each item was written from the company's or the regulator's own announcement, and each carries its sources.

For each report we noted every forward date the source states and what it is attached to. We did not add dates a source does not give, and we did not convert vague timing ("in the coming months") into a month. Where a company gives a range or a ceiling, we kept the wording. We then grouped the promises into passenger services, freight and logistics, and rules.

Two limits matter. First, the set reflects what we chose to report, which is weighted towards companies and regulators that publish in English or in a language we read. Second, a red note on one of our items means the item rests on a single source, usually the company. It does not mean the plan is doubtful, only that nobody independent has confirmed it yet.

None of our own products, and no company connected to us, appears anywhere in this data.

Madrid: three operators, three dates

Spain's Directorate General of Traffic issued the country's first national permit for Level 4 passenger vehicles on public roads to WeRide, Uber and AVOMO, as we reported on 10 September. The permit covers testing of WeRide's GXR robotaxis around Madrid, and the companies said they expected commercial operations to begin before the end of 2026, pending deployment preparations and further operational and regulatory milestones. Madrid is the fourth of 15 cities in the WeRide and Uber plan, which calls for eleven more by 2030.

Waymo followed on 20 October. It said it had begun the groundwork for a fully driverless ride-hailing service in Spain, starting with the Region of Madrid, and that it aims to take its first riders in 2027.

A day later Bolt, the Estonian ride-hailing and delivery company, said it had chosen NVIDIA's Alpamayo Stack as the driving software for its European autonomous programme, starting with Lucid electric cars in Madrid in 2027. NVIDIA repeated the Bolt choice at its GTC event in Berlin, where it also named Volvo Cars as a new user of its Hyperion platform.

So one region now holds a permit-backed service promised for this year and two further services promised for next year, from three different technology stacks: WeRide's own system, Waymo's, and NVIDIA's software in Lucid cars. For anyone who sells into that market, from insurers and depot operators to charging and cleaning contractors, Madrid is the place in Europe where the demand will be tested first.

The dates are not equal in weight. The WeRide permit is a regulator's act that we could read; the 2027 dates from Waymo and Bolt are company plans, and both of our reports carry a red note for that reason.

2027 is where the passenger promises cluster

Outside Madrid, the dated passenger promises in our reports fall like this:

• Denmark, first half of 2027. WeRide and GreenMobility, which runs more than 1,500 electric shared cars in Copenhagen and Aarhus, plan a public service subject to regulatory approval. It would be WeRide's first in the Nordic region.
• A US city, 2027. Mobileye says it will own and operate a robotaxi business as well as supply the technology, starting with about 100 vehicles in a major US metropolitan area and roughly 17,000 over five years. The city and partners are not named.
• Kobe, 2027 and 2030. Nissan runs a pilot in the Nada Gogo district from 8 to 18 December 2026 with Level 2 Serena vans and a safety driver, aims to charge fares in 2027, and wants full commercial operation in the area by 2030.
• Toronto, 2028. Waymo has picked Toronto as its first Canadian city, with cars driven by people mapping it now, Element Fleet Management running the fleet, and first riders planned for 2028.

Add the two Madrid dates and five of the seven forward-dated passenger launches in our reports are set for 2027. Only the WeRide permit in Madrid points to 2026, and only Toronto points beyond 2027.

The clustering has a plain reading. Companies announce a city about a year before they expect to carry the public, because mapping, local permits and depot work take that long. A 2027 date announced in late 2026 is the normal shape of an announcement, not evidence that 2027 will be a breakthrough year. The useful signal is in the detail each company gives: Mobileye names a fleet size and a five-year target; WeRide and GreenMobility name a vehicle and an operator with an existing fleet; Waymo names a fleet manager for Toronto. A plan with an operator and a vehicle attached is further along than one without.

Services already carrying people

Five reports describe passenger services that were running when we wrote about them, and each works under a different condition:

• London. Uber riders requesting UberX, Uber Electric or Uber Comfort can be matched with a Wayve-driven car at no extra cost, under Transport for London licences. A trained, TfL-licensed driver sits in every car and can take over, and more than 140,000 Londoners had opted in.
• Doha. Pony.ai says its service is operating commercially and charging fares across Old Doha, West Bay and Hamad International Airport, and that Qatar's Ministry of Transport rated the pilot a success.
• Zagreb. Pony.ai and Verne began fully driverless test rides with passengers on the airport route, after Verne's own service had driven more than 200,000 km with a person on board.
• Singapore. Grab plans to grow its Punggol fleet from 10 to 50 vehicles within six months, with a waitlist of more than 1,000 people, and has certified 30 safety operators from its own driver and delivery partners.
• Britain. The government's pilot scheme for self-driving taxi and bus services opened to operator applications in May, each needing safety and cyber approval and the local transport authority's consent.

Three of the five keep a human in the loop, either in the seat or watching remotely. That matters for anyone costing a service: the step from supervised to driverless is where the operating model changes, and our reports show most services in Europe and Asia still on the near side of it.

Freight is further along than ride-hailing

The freight reports are fewer but more concrete, and they give the counts a buyer can test.

Aurora told investors in September that it was fully allocated to end 2026 with 200 driverless trucks and set a target of more than 30,000 by 2030. In July it said it had put its second-generation trucks on the road with hardware designed to last one million miles, and that the Aurora Driver had completed nearly 440,000 driverless miles by the end of June. McLane, the Berkshire Hathaway foodservice distributor, approved driverless operation on the Dallas to Houston lane after 1,400 loads with a safety driver, and plans routes across the Sun Belt by the end of 2026. Hirschbach, a refrigerated carrier, signed a non-binding memorandum for 500 Aurora trucks with deliveries from 2027.

Kodiak had 35 driverless trucks working with no one in the cab at the end of June, and its truck in the Permian Basin ran 64 consecutive days without powering off. It is preparing a driverless highway launch on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston by the end of 2026, and has started a driver-in pilot from Fresno to Los Angeles under California's new heavy-duty rules.

Outside the US, Oxa and the Dubai Future Foundation formed SHIFFT to put self-driving vehicles to work in ports and airports, with a first scalable commercial deployment promised before the end of 2027. Pony.ai showed a Level 4 battery-electric heavy truck built with GAC and said volume production begins later in 2026.

The contrast with ride-hailing is in the units. Freight companies report trucks in service, miles, loads and days of uptime; ride-hailing companies more often report cities and target years. Freight runs on fixed lanes between depots that a company controls, which is a simpler problem than a city street, and the customers are businesses that sign contracts. For a logistics buyer, the dates in the freight reports are closer to commitments than the passenger dates are to schedules.

Rules are moving at different speeds

Eight reports are about rules or public programmes rather than company plans, and they explain much of the geography above.

Spain's national Level 4 permit is the reason Madrid leads. In Britain, the Department for Transport consulted on a statement of safety principles that sets the bar at a level of safety equivalent to at least that of careful and competent human drivers; the consultation closed on 9 September and the final text goes before Parliament next year. California's Department of Motor Vehicles approved rules allowing heavy-duty autonomous trucks on public roads on 28 April 2026, which is what opened the Kodiak pilot.

In the air, the UK Civil Aviation Authority published how it will manage drone and eVTOL noise and aims for a framework supporting commercial vertical take-off operations by the end of 2028, while the US made Albuquerque the sixth site in its eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. In Japan the transport ministry chose Taisei and TIER IV to test three self-driving cars in a tunnel for its Autoflow Road logistics lanes, and the trade ministry funded TIER IV's autonomous bus trials in Saudi Arabia.

Rules for the car itself are moving too. China's industry ministry is taking comments until 19 December on five mandatory national standards, including vehicle data security and automated parking. That item sits in our modern cars category, but any operator running Chinese-built vehicles abroad will need to follow it.

The pattern across these reports is that a service launches where a national rule exists to licence it, not where the technology is ready first. Spain wrote a permit and got three operators; Britain wrote a pilot scheme and got London services; California wrote truck rules and got a pilot within months.

What 21 red notes tell a buyer

Of our 30 autonomy reports, 21 carry a red note. In our other two new categories the share is similar: 29 of the 45 robotics and modern car reports carry one. The reason is the same in almost every case. The report rests on the company's own announcement, and we found no regulator page, partner statement or independent account that confirms the plan.

That is normal for an industry that announces years ahead, but it changes how the dates should be used. A few cases from the set show the range:

• Hirschbach's 500 trucks are a non-binding memorandum. The number is a statement of intent, not an order.
• Oxa's "before the end of 2027" is a ceiling, not a schedule.
• Mobileye's 17,000 vehicles over five years come with no named city, partner or vehicle, and the company promised details at a later capital markets day.
• Waymo's $5 billion term loan, its first debt financing, is the opposite case: lenders led by PIMCO, Blackstone and Sixth Street, following a $16 billion equity investment earlier in 2026, is money committed rather than a plan, and it funds the expansion the city announcements describe.

We keep each note until an independent source confirms the plan, and clear it when one does. A reader can use the notes as a quick filter: a dated promise without a red note has a second source behind it.

What to check when planning around these dates

For a business that wants to sell to, buy from or prepare for these services, the reports suggest a few checks that are specific to this field:

• Ask which permit the date depends on. A start date tied to a named permit, as in Madrid, can be tracked on the regulator's site. A date tied to "regulatory approvals" in general cannot.
• Ask whether there is a person in the loop, and where. London's Wayve cars have a driver in the seat; Nissan's Kobe vans have a safety driver and a remote operations centre; Kodiak's Permian trucks have no one aboard. Staffing, insurance and incident handling differ for each.
• Ask who runs the fleet. Waymo's Toronto plan names Element Fleet Management; Grab trains its own partners as safety operators; Mobileye intends to own and operate. The fleet operator is the counterparty for depot, charging and maintenance contracts.
• Treat a non-binding memorandum as a lead, not an order. It tells you who is interested, not what will be bought.

Our autonomous driving technology category lists 18 companies and our autonomous vehicle operator category 15. We will keep adding dated promises to our autonomy reports as they are announced and clear the notes as independent confirmation arrives, so the count above will move. The next fixed points are the end of 2026, when WeRide's Madrid service, Aurora's 200 trucks and Kodiak's Interstate 45 launch are all due.

Related on TrustList:

• Grab will grow its Singapore AV fleet fivefold and has certified 30 operators
• Pony.ai says Doha robotaxi pilot passed the ministry's review
• Mobileye plans its own robotaxi service starting in 2027