Waymo has announced that it will bring its robotoxi to the community of Madrid, with the intention of opening the service to the first users in 2027. Its white Jaguar I-PACE will debut in the coming days: first manually driven and then in autonomous mode with an expert sitting behind the wheel.
It’s a movement we’ve seen coming since July due to its European documentation.
Why is it important?. This is the first time the most truly driverless kilometer company has set foot in Spain. So far, our country has had autonomous driving on campus shuttles, buses in industrial estates and testing systems overseen by manufacturers.
Waymo has more than 4,000 cars that already operate without anyone behind the wheel in fifteen US cities and makes more than 500,000 payments per week.
- Madrid joins London and Munich on its European list, although none of the three yet have commercial services.
details. Under VEH Directive 2025/07, Waymo has already received permission from the DGT to conduct tests on public roads. The plan is the same that is repeated in every city: map the road by driving manually, verify the system with the safety driver and only then, remove the person from the seat.
is asked by XatakaThe company gave us some additional details about this initial deployment:
- the area. The tests will take place day and night in the urban environment of the capital of Madrid, Alcobendas and Getafe. They do not cover the entire community but they are not limited to the interior of the M-30 either.
- the fleet. It will be “small” in this first phase, without specific statistics.
- App. By 2027 it works with “local operating partners” without detailing integration with specific platforms. In London, Move, a fleet management company owned by Uber, plays this role.
- the car. Although it’s a model that was discontinued two years ago, it will use the I-PACE with the fifth generation of Waymo drivers installed in Chinese company Zeekr’s Ojai van and Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the US from 2020 and earlier. It will evaluate other vehicles as the fleet grows.
contrast. Waymo is not the first in Madrid. The DGT has already granted the first national permits for Level 4 autonomous passenger vehicles to WeRide, Uber and Avomo, with an initial phase of 20 GXR vehicles with experts on board in high-demand areas of Madrid.
Uber has confirmed its intention to deploy these robotaxis in Madrid before the end of 2026. And 19 Teslas have been approved for about a year until November 2027 to test their autonomous driving on Spanish roads, always with someone supervising from the driver’s seat.
beyond. Madrid has already shown how far taxis can go. In January 2019, they staged a 16-day strike against Uber and Cabify, with Castellana running rush hour and Fitur. In Barcelona, the Generalitat was pressured to force VTC to hire 15 minutes earlier, and Uber and Cabify left the city.
between the lines. Waymo, after all, sells safety: So far its rides have had 95% fewer accidents involving serious injury or death than human drivers.
For the Spanish context, it chose 1,119 deaths on intercity roads in 2025, mostly from road departures and head-on collisions. They are secondary roads, so urban robotaxis cannot ply.
Missing? The DGT covers permit tests, but requires a passenger transport authorization to charge for trips without a driver, an area where taxis and VTCs have been at odds in half of Spain for more than ten years. Waymo speaks of “first users in 2027”, though without specifying whether they will travel with the front seat unoccupied or occupied, and DGT itself has warned that unsupervised driving will not arrive in the short to medium term.
Featured Image | Xataka with the Magnificent
In Xataka | I tried a fully autonomous taxi. Such is driving without a driver
