Robotaxis Got Their London Licences. There Is Still a Driver in Every One.

TfL has licensed the first self-driving cars to carry Uber passengers in London. The headlines made it sound like the driverless era started last week. It did not. Here is what was actually approved, and the bit that matters if you drive for a living.

What actually happened

On 5 August 2026, Transport for London issued private hire vehicle licences to a fleet of self-driving cars run by the British company Wayve, working with Uber.

The cars are modified Ford Mustang Mach-Es. Wayve's system is what the industry calls mapless, meaning it works out the road as it goes rather than relying on a pre-built high-detail map, and it does not use LiDAR, the spinning laser sensor you see on the roof of a lot of driverless prototypes.

TfL has approved up to fifteen vehicles, on a trial basis. Uber has around 100,000 Londoners on an interest list, and a selection of them will get invitations to book a ride later this summer.

That is the whole of it, for now. Fifteen cars.

The bit the headlines skipped

Every one of those cars has a trained, TfL-licensed private hire driver sitting in it, for the entire trip.

The car drives itself. The driver is there to supervise, help the passenger, and take the wheel if anything needs a human. This is a supervised trial, and the licence TfL granted does not permit anything else. There is no version of this where an empty car turns up at a passenger's door.

It is worth understanding why the licensing works this way, because it tells you how seriously the framework is taking it. Private hire in London runs on what is called the triple lock: the operator, the driver and the vehicle all have to be licensed, by the same licensing authority. Uber already held the operator licence. What happened on 5 August was the last piece, the vehicles themselves getting licensed, alongside the supervising drivers who hold their own PHV licences.

So the "robotaxi" that might pick someone up in London this summer is a licensed private hire vehicle, with a licensed private hire driver in it, operated by a licensed private hire operator. In licensing terms it is a minicab. A very sophisticated minicab.

Why the driver in the seat is not just a formality

This is the part worth getting right, because there are two different sets of rules in play and they are easy to mix up.

The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 is the big framework. Under it, once a vehicle is properly authorised as self-driving, responsibility for how it drives shifts to the company behind it, called the authorised self-driving entity. The person in the seat becomes a "user-in-charge" rather than a driver, and is not on the hook for how the car drives itself. Building on earlier law from 2018, the vehicle's insurer sits in the front line for compensating anyone injured.

That is the future, and it is genuinely a big change.

It is not what is running in London right now. These trial vehicles are not authorised under that regime. They are operating under the government's Code of Practice for automated vehicle trialling, which is the older, narrower arrangement that lets companies test on public roads provided a trained safety driver is present and able to take control at any time.

In plain terms: for the London trial, there is still a licensed human driver in charge of that car, and the vehicle is insured like any other private hire vehicle. If you have a shunt with one tomorrow, you are dealing with a driver and an insurer, the same as any other claim.

We would rather say that clearly than let anyone assume the law has already moved. The insurance industry has been asking government for more detail on exactly how liability will work once vehicles are properly authorised, and that detail is not all settled yet.

What the trade makes of it

Not much, so far.

Steven McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, called self-driving taxis "a solution looking for a problem", and doubted robotaxis would have any real advantage on London's road network.

You can take that as you like. He represents black cab drivers and has an obvious interest, and fifteen supervised cars is not a threat to anybody's livelihood this year. But the underlying point about London's roads is not silly. Roadworks, bus lanes, cyclists, temporary diversions and streets that were laid out before anyone thought about cars are a hard problem, and it is a reasonable thing to be sceptical about until the trial data says otherwise.

What we would actually watch

We work with taxi and private hire drivers every day, so the questions we care about are the boring practical ones rather than the futurology.

Whether the safety driver stays. The whole economic case for robotaxis rests on eventually removing the person in the seat. As long as there is a licensed driver on board, the cost base looks a lot like a normal minicab. Watch for the point when someone applies to run these without a supervisor, because that is the actual change.

How incidents get handled. Fifteen cars in London traffic will have bumps. It is what happens in the ordinary run of things. The interesting question is how quickly evidence gets produced and who takes a position, because these vehicles are recording continuously and that is a very different evidence picture from a typical two-car dispute.

Whether it grows. Fifteen is a pilot. Uber and Wayve have talked about services across more than ten cities. Whether the London trial expands, and how fast, will tell you more than any announcement.

If you drive for a living

Nothing about your day changes this week, and probably not this year.

If you have a non-fault accident, the process is exactly what it has always been. You are entitled to a like-for-like replacement vehicle so you can keep working, your loss of earnings is a real head of claim, and if your vehicle is plated you need a plated replacement rather than whatever happens to be on the forecourt. None of that is affected by what the other car was doing or who was, or was not, steering it.

The one genuine difference, if the other vehicle is one of these, is evidence. These cars record continuously and in detail. That cuts both ways, but on the whole a claim where the other side has comprehensive footage of what happened is a claim that gets resolved on facts rather than on two conflicting accounts. For a driver who was not at fault, that is usually good news.

If you drive a taxi or private hire vehicle and you have been hit by someone else, get in touch or ring us on 01606 662300. We will tell you what we can get you and how quickly, so you stay earning.