Shared mobility giant Bolt has revealed it has no plans to bring autonomous vehicles to London this year.
“London is not on the list for this year,” Charlotte Eisner, Bolt’s Head of Commercialisation and Corporate Partnerships for Autonomous Vehicles, told Zag Daily.
“To target London and Paris – that’s a really big ask,” Eisner added. “For PR, it’s great value. But to actually deploy and get started, I think if you were to ask Waymo, Uber and others, they would need to wait a long time to get the permits.”
London has become one of Europe’s most prominent self-driving battlegrounds. Wayve launched a public waitlist for robotaxi rides with Uber last month, placing Uber in direct competition with US robotaxi company Waymo.
Meanwhile, Waymo began autonomous driving testing in April, whilst the company has previously reported that fully driverless ride-hailing services would be available to the public by September this year.
On the regulation side, self-driving vehicles are moving ahead on the agenda. In May, the UK government formally opened applications for operators to run self-driving passenger services on public roads, whilst a public consultation is now underway to shape the principles that will govern how these vehicles run on British streets.
Where are Bolt AVs headed next?
On where Bolt’s next AV market will be, Eisner confirmed Europe is the priority, going little further than confirming it will “likely” be in the EU.
The operator is ambitiously targeting 100,000 self-driving vehicles on its platform by 2035. Whilst Eisner said Bolt is “equally interested” in markets both within and outside of the EU, she said that the company is “very supportive” of the EU’s recent self-driving testbed announcement.
Last month, 18 Member States signed a Joint Declaration of Intent on large-scale cross-border testbeds for autonomous vehicles, aiming to accelerate harmonised deployment across the continent.
“So it will likely be within the EU,” Eisner said.
Luxembourg is Bolt’s first testing market for autonomous vehicles. Six vehicles are currently undergoing the first phase of testing in the central town of Bissen with manual drivers. This phase is expected to last for under two months before the vehicles begin autonomous testing with safety drives behind the wheel.
Eisner said Bolt’s aiming for two announced European pilots this year – Luxembourg included – and “maybe one more somewhere else”, adding that medium-sized cities of above 300,000 people are being targeted.
Whilst Bolt’s first testing activities are taking place in Luxembourg, this doesn’t mean the nation will be its first commercial market.
Driverless operations in Luxembourg are slated for 2027 subject to regulatory approvals but Eisner said that “there are other markets we could move quicker in”.
“I will not tell you today but there will be a reason for us to talk soon on where we open up our next market.”
Eisner confirmed that more cities are underway, with Bolt waiting for communications to be led by the city.
“We want the city to be the one welcoming us. There are enough others that are just talking about launching in a lot of cities but if that’s not anchored in the city, it creates a lot of problems, not only for them but for the industry as a whole,” she said, citing that reactions from other stakeholders like fire and police departments can cause worry and uncertainty.
“We already have MOUs and permits on the way in several cities but we choose not to talk about it.”
