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Comment by NeoTar | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know if there are any robo-taxis in operation in Europe?

I wonder if there are unique problems with European cities - e.g. Paris has a population density roughly fifteen times as great as Beijing() and Phoenix. European cities also tend* to have narrower streets than N. American cities.

(* Although this is complicated, and perhaps not a fair comparison. Paris draws its city limits very close - e.g. only about 2 million people of the 12 million people in the Paris metropolitan area actually live in Paris, so we should expect the population density to naturally be greater that a city which includes its suburbs).

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Beijing area wise is actually mostly rural, just a bit are dense suburbs and then of course anything inside the fifth ring road that we actually consider core Beijing. Think of Beijing as being a small state that consists of multiple counties, most of which are either mountains or farms.

Chongqing is even more rural with a bunch of small cities dispersed throughout, it isn’t really a single city with 39 million people.

Anyways. If someone has figured out self driving cars for chaotic (core) Beijing traffic, I don’t think any other city would pose that technology any problems.

There are some research teams that have done European demos, but honestly, no. The European automakers have the technical ability, but have repeatedly failed at organizational competence and understanding the right design mindset.

The EU regulatory environment has also been very different than the US on this subject. NHTSA and the various DMVs have been very laissez-faire about robotaxis, not banning them and allowing some level of (frankly unsafe) testing. The EU has taken a more traditional approach, where public road deployments will require type classification, which necessitates a whole bunch of legislation exist. For L2/L3 vehicles, that only recently came into existence. That framework doesn't exist for L4+ vehicles, so they cannot currently be deployed in Europe regardless of development status.

Even if it was possible from a legislative perspective, European cities are also considerably harder to drive in than American cities that are cars first with wider lanes and clear grid layouts. Most parts of Europe also have more variable weather conditions.

But yeah, it is indeed also sad that Europe does not have a single credible horse in the race.

Weather isn't really an issue. People would just test in the wide, sunny streets of Madrid (or some other overgrown, southern city) if they wanted to avoid those sorts of issues. Europe simply isn't seen as viable for development right now.

The regulatory environment is certainly noted and prepped for though.

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