A London company has developed a breakthrough in self-driving car tech

Wayve, a London-based startup working on autonomous vehicles, said it has developed AI technology that can enable any electric vehicle to drive autonomously in any city.

The company said its AI system demonstrated it could drive two different vehicles, a passenger car and a van, in a recent test, which it called “an industry first”.

It did this by relying on cameras mounted on top of a car, rather than the array of inbuilt cameras and sensors that is more common currently among aspiring self-driving cars. Wayve says the cameras can be easily installed on different kinds of vehicles.

This breakthrough, should it prove itself in further road testing, means Londoners could start seeing many more driverless cars on the city’s roads in the near future, and even benefit from commercial applications, like self-driving delivery vehicles that could help lower the cost of products amid soaring inflation.

“This is an industry-first achievement that shows we’re developing vehicle-agnostic autonomous-vehicle technology that can support the different-use cases for this technology,” said Alex Kendall, Wayve’s CEO.

Wayve’s technology promises to do for autonomous cars what Windows did for personal computers: provide an operating system that functions the same, irrespective of the hardware, eliminating the need to develop custom software every time.

So far, companies working on autonomous driving have largely focused on developing systems that are tailor-made for a specific car model, and often rely on precise maps, an array of cameras and sensors, and advanced positioning capabilities to find their way around a city.

But self-driving capabilities in passenger cars have yet to deliver a truly driverless experience. Drivers are usually required to be attentive and sometimes to keep their hands on the wheel, ready to respond in case of emergencies, even as self-driving tech continues to improve.

Tesla’s Autopilot, for example, allows drivers to summon their cars to wherever they are. Chinese company and top Tesla rival Xpeng, meanwhile, relies on Lidar, among other sensors, which is also the same tech used on the iPhone 14’s new cameras. Cars from both makers, however, have not been cleared for full-self driving in any country.

For now, commercial uses for autonomous vehicles appear to be the most likely next step for the technology. In the UK, grocery and retail chains like Wilko, Co-op, and Ocado have invested or initiated partnerships with autonomous vehicle startups, focusing on last-mile delivery, which is the final step of the delivery process, when goods are moved from a hub to their final destination, like someone’s home.