Servus München: Waymo Is Coming to Germany
waymo.com63 points by boulos 2 days ago
63 points by boulos 2 days ago
I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out for Waymo, as (unlike Uber in Zagreb) they will be competing with a world-class public transport system. A bold move! But perhaps that only goes to show how far ahead of the competition Waymo is, if they are this confident.
> world-class public transport
It’s really not at all at the same level as other European cities. It’s so bad that basically every year high up officials write a Brandbrief (urgent appeal) to either Deutsche Bahn or Ministry of transport that the situation is unbearable. Having lives in 3 different German cities, it’s by far the worst and most unreliable.
In contrast to the US, many people exclusively rely upon public transport and eg a drivers license costs north of 4K € (approx 5k USD), in addition to much higher gasoline prices - making a car way less affordable.
# 1. State Minister Bernreiter's Brandbrief to DB InfraGO (2026) https://www.bayern.de/kritik-an-langsamfahrstellen/
# 2. Pullach Municipal Brandbrief on the S7 (2025) https://www.pullach.de/buergerbrief-uns-reicht-es-jetzt-geme...
# 3. MVV & Stakeholders Brandbrief to Deutsche Bahn (2022) https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/muenchen/s-bahn-muss-zu...
# 4. Mayors' Joint Transit Funding Brandbrief (2025) https://www.bild.de/politik/friedrich-merz-neuer-brandbrief-...
# 5. Landräte Transit Cuts Warning Brandbrief (2024) https://in-motion.me/articles/2024-12-22_es-drohen-kuerzunge...
# 6. Pro Bahn Munich Analysis & Brandbrief (2024) https://www.pro-bahn.de/oberbayern/pbp/pbp202401.pdf
Taxis and public transport have coexisted since forever. They just serve different occasions and/or people. Why would it be different with Waymo?
Cool!
AI vehicle coordination (and autonomous driving) could save so much traffic.
But before I get into a rant here: Munich seems like the perfect city for this beta, and I wish them loads of success.
Munich has wide streets, affluent population, and a freshly elected progressive government.
Idk they could lead to significantly _more_ traffic
As driving becomes easier to access due to an influx of vehicles, could lead to a Jevon's paradox situation where there's more driving demand, and more autonomous vehicles on the road, often circling because they know they're likely to get another rider soon, causing more congestion than today
The lobbying done by these companies also clearly favors car traffic over public transit & pedestrian traffic. I'd much rather optimize for better walking and biking traffic than car traffic
How? The traffic is the movement of vehicles. Can you save traffic by increasing the volume of trafficked things? How would AI vehicle coordination work with non-AI participants (i.e. meatbags)
I didn't want to discuss it further, and I also don't think this is a priority for Google, but I don't think that humans need as many cars as there are to go places. Key to reducing traffic would be to stop blocking huge parts of dense cities with parked vehicles, and ultimately, drastically reduce the number of personally owned vehicles.
People don't pay for the external costs of their vehicles, so it should be required to use vehicles efficiently.
This is not a technological question, but a political, and Google ain't going to solve it without an incentive.
But autonomous vehicles could in theory transform car traffic by huge amounts in dense areas, without sacrificing mobility. Munich is a metropolitan area.
The biggest hindrance to mobility in large cities are usually cars and car infrastructure themselves, because the incentives from countries and for companies are to waste space and energy, and subsidize that.
Ride sharing with autonomous vehicles could reduce need for private cars enormously. Not that I think it's gonna happen in Munich because of Google now.
The technology could just help with it.
Alas, Sorry, I wrote quite a bit already, but I don't want to expand on this repetitive discussion for my own sanity.
And yeah, when people want to have many cars and money can be made by building many cars, even subsidized by the state, the we will continue to block more space with them and build more.
"Meatbags" want it, since the successful lobbying of automotive industry to subordinate all public space and resources in the first half of the 20th century.
But this is not AI coordination saving traffic. It's 'sharing economy'. And its already here and it sux. All the bicycles which can be borrowed for a few cents per minute didn't replace personal bikes, anywhere, I think. At least in Germany they created many problems for what seems a tourist convenience. Even worse with scooters...
Same with car-sharing. In theory good but in practice I'd rather own my car 100x than finding a car, making photos to record any damage, handling rubbish from others etc.
Hm, I see that is a problem, yes, but I thought we were talking about autonomous driving?
The crappy share-bicycles that nobody is responsible for also are kind of the opposite of the lender-owned car sharing car that might have predatory lending conditions.
In the end, what I would much prefer is sharing, yes. Vehicle infrastructure is public property after all.
I don't think providing better mobility that does not force everyone to have a car, at least in densely populated areas, would require a radical shift to a "sharing economy" for everything and anything.
You don't buy a car to leave it running in your garage. It is not simply a good that you possess, to use it, you already require a "sharing economy", just a different one. Car traffic is subsidized by everyone.
But I get that most people have issues with this idea.
And it is not for me to decide.
What I mean is simple: how public space is used is never an individual decision. The collective move to individual car ownership for everyone as a given neccessity for a normal life is not something that naturally comes from the existence of cars as a technology, it is a political decision.
Car owners don't use their cars on their own property. And the more cars we use, the less mobile we are, in cities.
Now I'm knee-deep in the discussion I didn't want, I won't see this changing in my lifetime I guess, I think it demonstrates a fundamental flaw in economic logic to treat car ownership as something that is only the responsibility and freedom of individuals, because cars are only useful when everything is built for cars, and in dense areas, this restricts the freedom of others, it's not only about the freedom to have a car.
Everybody is free to buy a car and put it into their garden.
Btw, I agree about the crappy bicycles, like I said, I don't get why you equate this with every idea about changing traffic policies around cars, which are not something that revolves naturally from the right to own property. The topic is that using cars for anything requires to use other's property.
The ages-old urban planning discussion.
Again, I got myself into this discussion that I didn't want and that tends to make me misanthropic, so I'll check out here. I'm also in working hours and need to leave.
Have a good day.
Oh, I agree that people don't pay for the external costs of their vehicles and that reducing the number of cars is what makes the cities great again.
My gripe with the autonomous cars is that they still need to park _somewhere_. They might park further away, but the company that parks their car closest to the pick up point will have an advantage over competition and thus the incentive would be to have the cars as close to customers as possible (lower cost of pickup, quicker turn around, potentially higher price for faster pickup).
In the current phase it just displaces the need for taxi labor. In the long term, you could technically remove all signage and have V2V communication to define vehicle movement without ever stopping. Example you could make an intersection where cars zigzag through each other instead of stopping.
All this being said, it’s no replacement for competent mass transit.
super interesting, i really wanted to try waymo but just never had the opportunity; maybe in Munich then
also, uber (in partnership with pony.ai and verne, a Croatian startup) launched robotaxis in Zagreb a week ago https://www.reuters.com/technology/uber-launches-autonomous-...
so waymo/Munich is in fact the second in the EU; also they are playing it safe
> In the coming weeks, you’ll start to see Waymo vehicles on the streets of Munich where we’ll begin driving manually across the city. We are taking a rigorous, phased approach that starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks and testing with trained autonomous specialists behind the wheel. This validation period will ensure the Waymo Driver adapts seamlessly to Munich’s distinct driving conditions before we aim to open commercial ride-hailing to the public towards the end of 2027.
Related vw self driving project in Hamburg https://www.moia.io/de-DE/blog/autonome-mobilitaet-in-hambur...
Curious how different the safety outcomes will be to the US. A Waymo is safer than an American driver, but so is a European driver. A driver from Norway is even safer than a Waymo.
Lol, the entire article is about backroom deals with the German car industry.
Get out the traffic cones.
I've learned to be wary of these cars in the bay area, they seem to cut it close often, and they get stuck because they're not L5. I hope municipalities know what they're getting.
Oh no. The traffic in München is allready crap. Noone needs those selfstopping monsters.
In the not-so-distant future, you’ll be able to book a trip from your front door to any other front door in the world in 1 ticket/payment.
Imagine not even having to switch vessels with the vehicle morphing from freeway driving to personal flight even to in-town or scenic driving (or flight) with different routes, handling and displays.
I’d like to float around in a bubble, like Glinda the good witch