Uber Manchester Robotaxi Trial Starts With Pony.ai and Verne

What happened in Manchester

Uber has started testing autonomous vehicles on Manchester's streets. The cars use technology from Pony.ai and the Croatian operator Verne, and Uber calls the trial the first step toward bringing robotaxis to cities across the UK.21 Uber, Pony.ai and Verne already run a commercial autonomous taxi service together in Zagreb, which has been described as Europe's first.21 Verne said on social media that its autonomous testing in Manchester had begun. Pony.ai said testing was under way and that it plans to bring robotaxis to the city.21

The word "trial" covers a fairly modest operation. The cars are mapping the city with a safety driver behind the wheel, and they carry no passengers.2523 At least one outlet headlined the news as "driverless robotaxi tests"30, but every detailed account describes supervised mapping runs. That is the more accurate reading. Pony.ai's seventh-generation vehicles are reported to be running under a government permit involving the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and the Department for Transport.28

No operator has applied to run a passenger service in Manchester.21 Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) said it wants the region's taxis to be the safest in the country, and that it would need strong assurances that no vehicle on its roads poses a risk to residents.21 In another version of the statement, TfGM said it knows companies are interested but has received no applications.26 The partnership's credibility rests on Zagreb, where the companies carry passengers and have this week begun testing robotaxis with nobody on board.28 An August agreement between Uber and Pony.ai reportedly aims for more than 2,000 robotaxis across Europe and adds four cities beyond Zagreb.28

The UK regulatory runway

Manchester's trial depends on a national framework that is still being built. Applications opened on 22 May 2026 for operators who want to run taxi-, bus- and private-hire-style self-driving services across Great Britain. Local transport authorities such as Transport for London (TfL) have to give consent before a service can launch.1 The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 moves legal responsibility for incidents from the person in the car to an "authorised self-driving entity". That change has made the UK one of Europe's main testbeds for commercial robotaxis.4 The full regime under the Act is expected in 2027. Until then, permits are issued nationally through the DVSA, and a London application needs TfL's consent.56

London has moved further than Manchester. Limited passenger trips began there last month in cars supplied by Wayve, with a safety driver in the front seat under TfL's private-hire licensing rules.21 Uber began those supervised trips with Wayve on 3 September and has since said it will add Pony.ai vehicles to its London fleet.28 Coverage of who reached the UK market "first" has been loose. One analysis of the early-September reports said the operational details were unconfirmed and warned that a safety-driver pilot is a very different thing from driverless service.8 That caution still applies: no robotaxi in the UK yet carries paying passengers without a human on board.

Waymo is the main rival in the UK. It began autonomous testing in London in April with about 100 Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, each with a safety operator, across roughly 100 square miles. It has said it cannot run fully driverless until the government finalises the pilot rules.10 In January, the BBC reported Waymo hoping to launch a London service as early as September.2 That date has passed with no driverless Waymo service in the city.

The pushback: who controls the kerb

The Manchester news came in the same week as the most pointed political challenge yet to the UK's approach. The London Assembly's transport committee published a 66-page report saying it had not heard enough evidence to persuade it that London should welcome autonomous passenger services.51 The report makes 13 recommendations. The main one is that when the full regulations arrive in 2027, the government should hand TfL the power to issue and withdraw permits, set conditions and cap fleet sizes.54 It also asks for crashes and near misses to be reported within 24 hours, for "empty miles" to be tracked, and for remote-assistance staff to pass background checks and be based in the UK.51

The report argues that TfL currently has little influence once a car is on the road. TfL's strategy director told the committee the authority cannot attach conditions to a permit because it does not issue the permit.52 Public support is weak. A YouGov survey cited in the report found 29% of Londoners backed driverless vehicles and 42% opposed them.53 The GMB and ADCU unions say thousands of driver jobs are at risk.25 The report counts about 16,000 licensed taxi drivers and 105,000 private-hire drivers in London.51 The recommendations are not binding. Neither the government nor TfL has responded.57

This matters for Manchester because the same governance question will come up there. TfGM's statement sounds like a regional authority that wants a say before robotaxis go into service, not after.22 In my reading, mapping now and applying later puts Uber's partnership in a strong position on the technology but a weak one politically. If devolution campaigners win in London, Manchester's leaders will probably ask for the same powers.

The view from America: Waymo's scale, Tesla's speed

The gap between the UK and the US is large. Waymo closed a $5 billion loan from lenders including PIMCO and Blackstone, its first debt financing, to fund growth in the US, Europe and Japan. It says it now operates in 15 markets.13 That count differs between sources. One report put Waymo's footprint at 14 US metro areas after it opened to the public in Denver, San Diego and Tampa.15 An October listing shows San Diego, Tampa and San Antonio as full commercial service, with Denver still waitlist-only.12 Whichever number is right, Waymo has grown quickly. California regulators approved its service in 18 counties in August.18 San Antonio has dropped its waitlist, and the service there includes the airport.14

Waymo also faces scrutiny. US safety regulators are investigating its robotaxis' behaviour around school buses and an incident in which a vehicle struck a child at low speed.13 Minneapolis's city council passed a resolution requiring human drivers in robotaxis, which the mayor vetoed. California passed a law letting the state fine operators whose vehicles obstruct emergency services.12 London's committee pointed to the same issues when it questioned whether safety claims from US cities would hold up on British roads.52

Tesla is growing its fleet fast while regulators look closely at it. Tesla says it has scaled to more than 300 Cybercabs in Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Model Y robotaxi numbers have stayed at 420.40 Elon Musk announced a wider Austin service area on X, and Austin officials reportedly learned of it from the same post.15 On the software side, FSD (Supervised) v14.3.12 began rolling out this week with a rewritten AI compiler that Tesla says cuts reaction time by 20%.34 A "Lite" version is reaching older HW3 cars, including legacy Model S and X vehicles with Intel processors.35 Tesla executives have said FSD v15, a model about ten times larger, will reach robotaxis this month to support round-the-clock service.32 For now, Austin service runs until 11pm.39 NHTSA has opened a defect petition covering about 1,000 Tesla robotaxis over claims they speed in active school zones.36

Trucking clears a hurdle of its own

Autonomous freight passed its own regulatory milestone the same week. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration gave Aurora and other Level 4 truck operators a five-year exemption, running from 7 October 2026 to 2031, that lets them use cab-mounted beacons instead of the warning triangles a human driver would normally place on the road.42 Before this, Aurora had operated on a series of three-month waivers, and an independent van operator has challenged that arrangement in court.43 The exemption excludes hazardous materials, passenger-carrying configurations and triple trailers.47

Operators are now expanding on Texas freight corridors. Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Waabi are hauling freight for Warp between Dallas and Houston with an observer on board, and plan driverless runs next year.5046 Kodiak and Charger USA are running the 435-mile Dallas–Laredo route with safety drivers and aim for unsupervised long-haul service by the end of 2026.48 Uber is involved here too: it has committed up to $250 million to Waabi, tied to milestones.45

Why it matters

Uber builds no autonomous technology itself. Its plan is to collect partners (Pony.ai and Verne in Zagreb and Manchester, Wayve in London, Waabi in freight) and offer their vehicles through its app. Uber says it expects robotaxi trips in up to 15 cities worldwide by the end of 2026, mostly in the US and the Middle East.21 CEO Dara Khosrowshahi describes a network of partnerships as the way autonomy scales globally.22

The main lesson from this week is that the hard part of scaling is now regulatory, not technical. In the US, operators are getting multi-year exemptions and statewide permits. In the UK, the national framework is in place, but cities are asking for control over fleet caps, data and permit withdrawal. Manchester's cars are learning the streets. The decision that counts will come when someone files a passenger application and Greater Manchester decides how much say it wants over the answer.