Britain might actually win the self-driving car war

Britain's bet on Wayve could make a big splash – but we need to pay attention now

A Wayve autonomous car driving in London.

POD! A super fun episode of The Abundance Agenda podcast this week. I make the case for why Manchester should bid for the 2036 Olympics as the ultimate Northern Powerhouse insurance policy, and we speak to architect Ivan Jordan about the problem with how we handle listed buildings. Listen/subscribe here.

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Hey everyone! I’m still on holiday for a couple more days so in lieu of a big essay post from me, my friend Tym Syrytczyk has written a fantastic guest post for me. He’s just started a great new Substack all about autonomous vehicles, so if you enjoy this, make sure you subscribe to him over there!

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You might not have noticed, but Britain has made a big bet on self-driving cars.

It begins with Wayve, the UK’s leading self-driving company. They will be offering driverless rides through the Uber app from spring next year. If their ambitions are realised, this could redefine how we get around and, with it, our logistics industry and daily commutes.

But even if the tech proves itself, the adoption won’t be smooth. Changes to how we get around are always controversial. The organised opposition to robotaxis will arrive immediately, just as it did with Uber, and ULEZ.

And to be fair, the consequences of the transition will be widely felt, going beyond transport policy, with autonomous cars shaping jobs, safety rules, data rights, and the look and feel of our streets.

Here, though, is the most interesting thing. This could be a technological transition that Britain wins. Unlike personal computing, smartphones, and the current AI wave, where the innovation mostly happened elsewhere, and the conquering companies were headquartered in Silicon Valley, in the self-driving car war, Britain is uniquely well-placed to win.

Our designated National Champion

Just before the last election, Parliament passed the Automated Vehicles Act. As a result, several firms have announced their intentions to enter Britain, including industry giant Waymo, which is owned by Alphabet (aka Google).

However, Wayve is the most interesting, as it isn’t just another self-driving startup with grand promises. They recently demonstrated their AI model can operate in new environments across multiple continents without retraining. It adapts to unfamiliar roads, traffic patterns, and weather conditions.

And the government is along for the ride.

Despite the country being massively cash-strapped, the government announced £36.5 million for automated mobility as part of a £150 million programme supporting the autonomous vehicle (AV) ecosystem. Here, Wayve is the clear frontrunner. So this is an intentional policy choice. Scarce resources are being allocated to support the company.

Can Wayve outscale Waymo?

The questions then are ‘How do we get this right?’, and ‘Can a British firm compete against a US tech giant?’.

The competition will be tough, Waymo has over 100 million autonomous miles under their belt and operates in several US cities. Ride-hail statistics and the dominance of Uber imply that autonomy is a winner-takes-most market; therefore the government has a natural interest in the British firm winning. Fortunately, Wayve has found a way to compete despite the size disadvantage.

Wayve’s approach is unique and it could enable them to scale faster. They train a single AI model on human driving data, enabling it to apply learned driving concepts to new environments without requiring detailed maps. Waymo takes a different approach, combining learned behaviours with explicit safety rules and high-definition maps so the vehicle knows each specific area in advance. It’s the difference between learning general driving principles and memorising each route in detail.

And the possibility of operating in new environments without extensive mapping changes the economics of scaling entirely. While Waymo (and Chinese competitors such as ApolloGo) spend months or years mapping and validating each new location, Wayve aims to enter new markets without this overhead. Whether this approach will prove superior is one of the most fascinating unanswered questions in self-driving vehicles.

Why it matters that it’s Wayve

The pace of the technology rollout and who benefits the most depends on whether Waymo or Wayve win. If Waymo dominates, Britain is a mere customer. If Wayve wins, Britain owns the platform and becomes an exporter of a technology that can transform existing electric vehicles into driverless cars. That’s the difference the government is betting on.

Wayve’s design is relatively hardware-agnostic. Their technology works across different electric vehicles with the addition of only a few cameras and sensors. This contrasts with Waymo’s fixed vehicle models and Tesla’s brand-locked technology. Unconstrained by the need for manufacturing capacity or brand loyalty, Wayve can expand through partnerships with existing automakers. And it is doing so already.

This is their most compelling strategic advantage. Wayve licenses their technology to vehicle manufacturers, including Nissan, which has already signed a deal to put a simpler version of Wayve’s technology in their vehicles, giving Wayve more driving data to improve its model. In principle, any of the world’s major car brands could offer a self-driving product through Wayve’s technology. This expands production capacity onto existing EV manufacturing lines, avoiding the bottleneck of building proprietary fleets.

If Wayve’s rapid deployment capability works, the licensing model becomes particularly attractive: manufacturers that partner with Wayve could offer self-driving capabilities across many countries, rather than wait years for geographically limited features from competitors. The advantage compounds. Faster rollouts lead to more data gathered by cars on the road, which in turn can be used to improve the technology’s capability in unfamiliar locations or conditions.

If Wayve succeeds, the licensing fees will flow to Britain. This could mean thousands of pounds for every vehicle sold globally with their technology. Even if a German car manufacturer sells to an Italian customer, Britain will benefit. The revenue would scale with adoption worldwide. Tax revenue from a large UK tech company would benefit the British Exchequer, not California’s budget.

The UK services flywheel

However, tax paid by Wayve is not the only opportunity here.

Beyond direct revenue, Britain’s professional services could also benefit. Britain’s expertise in legal frameworks and consulting means our firms will develop deep knowledge from working alongside both the Wayve and Waymo rollouts in London.

Last year, the UK joined France, Germany, Japan and Singapore as one of the first countries to enact nationwide legislation on autonomous vehicles. The Automated Vehicles Act gives our legal services a head start in addressing edge-case questions. If Wayve grows fast, so will the expertise of our professional services.

This means that each international deployment of Wayve’s technology could create demand for British legal, insurance, and consulting expertise. Firms in London could figure out the day-to-day challenges of implementation and apply the lessons elsewhere. This creates a competitive advantage beyond the technology itself, embedding Britain at the center of global autonomous vehicle deployments rather than merely supplying one component. Once proven domestically, Britain can export these services globally.

This, then, is Wayve’s ideal future: becoming the standard operating software of autonomous vehicles. It’s an ambitious vision that depends entirely on whether their technical approach works at scale. The government is betting it will. Nissan is betting it will. Nvidia is making a $500 million investment as well.

But whether Wayve’s end-to-end learning beats rules-based systems remains an open question. We’re about to find out.

And beyond this, Wayve has one more critical challenge ahead. Sure, they could make cars drive themselves, but can they handle a tabloid media storm?

The next big story

Wayve will be in the news soon. Their first commercial robotaxi operation begins in spring 2026, and it will immediately become a contentious topic in British public life.

London transport has a unique ability to rile people up. We saw this with ULEZ, an air quality policy that became a flashpoint for broader anxieties about cost of living and government overreach. We see it when Lime bikes block pavements or cycle lanes spark debate. Transport in London is never just about how we get around. It becomes a proxy for arguments about who the city is for, whose interests matter, and what future we want.

Add technology to the mix and the temperature rises further. Tech has become deeply political in Britain. People have strong opinions about surveillance, about American companies extracting value from our cities, and about whether innovation serves ordinary people or just makes founders wealthy. The government wants a national tech champion, which means this won’t fit neatly into the familiar narrative of localism versus American big tech. The politics will be more complex and more interesting.

Then there are labour relations. Taxi drivers will mobilise, and rightly so. Their livelihoods are at stake. But it won’t just be taxi drivers who get drawn in. Autonomous vehicles will touch upon existing debates around workers’ rights, urban planning, climate policy, and Britain’s industrial strategy.

And to be fair, there is a policy vacuum in government, as there isn’t yet a clear answer to the question of what happens to displaced workers. The government has done the AV-specific policy work. They’ve created a regulatory framework for establishing liability (such as when someone is hit by a self-driving car) through the Autonomous Vehicles Act, which also sets out the terms for commercial robotaxi operations. But the labour transition strategy appears to be hope rather than planning.

So when the first of Wayve’s cars hits London’s roads, the conversation won’t be about the elegance of their AI model or the opportunities from licensing revenue flowing to Britain. It will be about drivers protesting outside City Hall. And if the government hasn’t thought through the transition by then, they’ll be making policy in crisis mode while cameras roll. People should be paying attention now, while there’s still time to think it through properly.

Why optimists and pragmatists need to pay attention now

Opposition voices tend to dominate public debates about controversial projects. We see this in planning committees, where residents mobilise against new developments while those who would benefit stay silent. The application to renew the licence of a loud pub will receive dozens of objections, but few supporters will show up to speak, even when supporters are in the majority. The same dynamic will play out with autonomous vehicles.

Those worried about job losses, safety risks, or corporate power will organise immediately. They will attend consultations, write to MPs, and shape media coverage. Meanwhile, people who see potential benefits of autonomy may assume the technology will progress on its own merits or that someone else will make the case for it. This one-sided participation skews the debate and policy outcomes. Most people will start paying attention when it’s on BBC News. By then, key policy decisions will already be locked in.

The pessimists will show up regardless. But this is too important to leave to people who’ve already made up their minds. We need people who can think clearly about hard tradeoffs, spot gaps in policy before they become crises, and understand that ‘this is good’ and ‘this is bad’ are both too simple.

So autonomy deserves your attention before it becomes headlines. Wayve might succeed spectacularly or fail entirely. But robotaxis are coming to Britain either way. The government has bet scarce resources on this sector, prioritising it in cash-strapped times. But whether the technical approach pays off, whether Britain captures the economic benefits, and whether we handle the labour transition well - these questions are being answered now through policy decisions most people aren’t tracking.

A potential £42 billion industry deserves scrutiny and engagement, not just optimism or pessimism, but serious thought about what good implementation looks like. Whether we get the implementation right depends on who’s paying attention now, not who has opinions later. The conversation is starting. Consider being part of it while you can still shape it.

Tym Syrytczyk writes the excellent Self-Driving Insights newsletter. We also spoke to Tym on a recent episode of The Abundance Agenda.