Waymo starts Madrid testing, aims for robotaxi rides in 2027

Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google's parent company Alphabet, is coming to Spain. The company said on Tuesday that it will start testing in the Madrid region within days and aims to offer its first fully autonomous paid rides there in 2027, according to its new Spain page and a statement reported by Reuters. It is Waymo's first deployment in the country.

How the Madrid rollout works

Waymo is following the same step-by-step approach it used in Toronto and the US:

• Manual driving first. Electric Jaguar I-PACE cars will be driven by trained specialists to map streets and collect data.
• Then supervised autonomy. The car drives itself, but a local validation driver (a "safety driver") sits behind the wheel.
• Finally, driverless rides — only after Waymo gets the permits it needs.

Testing will run day and night, typically 24 hours a day, starting in Madrid City, Alcobendas and Getafe, with more areas to follow. Waymo will work under the testing framework of DGT, Spain's traffic authority. It says the system is being taught local traffic rules, road signs based on the 1968 Vienna Convention, and how cyclists and pedestrians get right of way in Madrid.

On privacy, Waymo says it complies with the EU's GDPR, does not use facial recognition and does not sell sensor data or use it for advertising. Spanish residents get a portal to exercise their data rights over images captured by the cars' cameras.

Not alone in Madrid

Waymo will not have the city to itself. Last month the DGT gave its first national permits for autonomous-vehicle testing to WeRide and Uber, which expect to launch a commercial service in Madrid by the end of this year, Reuters notes.

Spain joins a growing list of Waymo's international plans: London later this year, Tokyo in 2027 with Nihon Kotsu and GO (pending approval) and Toronto in 2028.

A much bigger fleet, if the report is right

The Madrid news came a day after Semafor reported, citing people familiar with the plans, that Waymo wants to grow its fleet from about 4,000 vehicles to 8,000 by the end of 2026 and 20,000 by the end of 2027. Waymo declined to comment. The expansion would follow a $5 billion loan earlier this month, the company's first debt deal, and would lean heavily on the Ojai, a robotaxi built on a Zeekr electric car that Waymo fits with its own hardware in Mesa, Arizona, The Next Web notes.

Waymo's own figures: more than 500,000 paid rides a week, more than 20 million paid rides in total, over 400 million km driven autonomously and 95% fewer crashes with serious injury or worse than human drivers over the same distance in its US cities. That safety number comes from Waymo's own analysis.

For the human-supervised driver aids you can buy today, see Rivian's Point-to-Point early access, and if you're thinking about an EV of your own, our home EV charger guide is a good start.